Most words’ meanings change over time but can you think of any that have done a complete 180 and evolved to mean just the opposite of what they first (or once) meant? I can’t think of any off the top of my head but I’m sure some of the brilliant linguists out here can come up with something.
It’s OK to stretch the concept of a word to include its etymological root words if needed.
“Literally” is almost always used exactly opposite of what it’s supposed to mean when it’s used to emphasize something.
Sick!
I am thinking of the word ‘infer.’
It used to mean to understand something that was being implied. Now, too many people us it to mean ‘imply.’ Some dictionaries, for second or tertiary preferences, now, also list it as meaning imply.
Best wishes,
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The most unnerving example I can think of – unnerving to me, because I am a science geek, and I hate how people misuse science terms – is the term “eye of the storm.”
People use it to describe the most chaotic or dangerous position in an unpleasant situation. That is utterly wrong. The eye of a real storm is dead calm, not wild.
Decimate used to mean to kill one out of every ten and now it generally is used to convey the concept of near total destruction.
Thre’s always flammable / inflammable.
The linguistically correct term for something which catches fire easily is inflammable. But too many Troo Bloo 'Merkins though that meant non-catch-on-fire-able, which is of course opposite to the real meaning.
So the nice safety folks invented the bastard word flammable to mean the same as what inflammable really means and the opposite of what the general foolish populace thinks inflammable means.
“Nice” originally meant “pedantic, nitpicking”. If you called someone’s comment “a nice distinction,” you were not being complimentary.
I infer that you’re complaining about people ignoring the distinction between “infer” and “imply.” Or did you imply that?
I wish people would stop saying this. The opposite meaning would be figuratively, and you cannot replace the usage with that word. The meaning of the word is the use of emphasis, just like “really” before it. Do you argue that “really” means the opposite of “in a real manner”?
Par.
In golf, it’s good to be below par. Out in the real world, below/sub par means a poor performance or not feeling well.
funny
Cleave. It’s actually a weird one because it means both to split apart and stick together.
There has to be a zillion of these…
Terrific went from very bad or frightful to quite great.
Dude used to mean a well dressed dandy and now, thanks to surfer culture, typically means just about the opposite.
Artificial didn’t used to have the negative connotations and was often complimentary.
Politically speaking, some older references to liberal or Republican are distinctly opposite to the current meanings.
gay
A “temper” used to be a personality feature that helped a person resist getting angry but is often used now to mean the opposite.
To “comprise” used to mean to include, so “my country comprises 50 smaller states”, but now is usually used as if it meant “compose”, which describes the same action but with the object and subject reversed. That is, (correctly) “my country is composed of 50 smaller states”, or (incorrectly) “my country is comprised of 50 smaller states”. I think it was Jimmy Carter who first used the word this way in a highly visible forum.
“Bad”. Used to mean bad. Now it could mean good, very good, or great.
So what if you couldn’t replace the usage with that word? You could, it would just sound awkward, but it would be accurate at least. I don’t know how your objection means it’s somehow correct to use exactly the wrong word in that situation.
If someone says “it took literally forever for me to get out of that traffic jam”, how could the term literally possibly be correct there? This is exactly the sort of thing that the OP is looking for as far as I know.
And as “terrific” went one way, it waved to “awful” going the other. There’s a very old hymn that begins “Before Jehovah’s awful throne…” – meaning, roughly, “awe-inspiring” in modern terms.