# What Other Words Have Lost Their Original Meanings? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 11, 2002, 8:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414 "2002-06-11T08:14:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jim\_B](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jim_b/32/4338_2.png) [@Jim\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_B)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 8:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/1 "2002-06-11T08:14:44Z")
More recently I was thinking to myself that there are some words that thru time have lost most or all of their original meaning. Some examples of this phenomenon are… Fabulous. _Present Meaning:_ Wonderful; superb; very good. _Original Meaning:_ Related to fables. Thus story-like or (ironically) not true, not believable. Fantastic. _Present Meaning:_ Like Fabulous: wonderful; superb; very good. _Original Meaning:_ Related to fantasies. Also could mean hard to believe. Corn. _Present Meaning:_ A yellow food plant. A grain that grows on a cob and is usu. prepared like a vegetable. “Maize” in most other English-speaking countries. _Original Meaning:_ Simply the native grain of any country or locale. Wheat in England, Oats in Scotland, etc. (BTW, [Cecil talks](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_102.html) about this very subject in one of his books.) Decimate. _Present Meaning:_ To utterly destroy. To kill off or destroy large numbers of (people, animals–sometimes inanimate things too). _Original Meaning:_ From the Latin _decimus_ meaning “every tenth”, this was an ancient Roman method of weeding out traitors in their ranks. Every tenth man was selected and killed until the guilty party came forth–or was driven insane in the process :eek: . Well, that is all I can come up with for now. So my question is this: What other words have lost their original meaning? TTFN:D ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/2 "2002-06-11T08:21:12Z")
Awful: used to mean something more like awesome. Bad/wicked : nuff said (although these haven’t truly lost their meaning yet) Vulgar used to simply mean ‘common’ ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 9:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/3 "2002-06-11T09:24:30Z")
Nice: It started off meaning foolish, stupid (from Latin nescius - unknowing), then migrated through wanton --\> strange --\> tender --\> coy and a few others before settling into its modern meanings of 1. precise and 2. pleasant. Clown: Used to mean a countryman, a peasant or rustic. Presently: This bore the meaning of straight away, without delay (as logically it should), it now means in a little while, as soon as I can. ---
**Author:** ![Go\_alien](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9d8465/32.png) [@Go\_alien](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Go_alien)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/4 "2002-06-11T09:36:07Z")
Gay: Used to mean colourful, bright, cheerful. Now means homosexual. Spin: used to mean rotate. Now means lie. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/5 "2002-06-11T10:37:10Z")
The King James Bible has many such words… **know** — used to mean “have intimate relations”. **discover** — used to mean “admit”. **prevent** — used to mean “precede”. **conversation** — used to mean “conduct”. **let** — used to mean “restrain”. …to name a few. ---
**Author:** ![Futile\_Gesture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f05b48/32.png) [@Futile\_Gesture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Futile_Gesture)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/6 "2002-06-11T12:11:27Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by aldiboronti \* > \*\*Presently: This bore the meaning of straight away, without delay (as logically it should), it now means in a little while, as soon as I can. \*\* This is a very common lexical drift. “Soon” itself used to mean immediately. It’s a testiment to human ability for procrastination that the word for immediate action keeps getting delayed and requires replacing. I think this why medicine now uses the term ‘stat’, as other terms have already begun to drift. Other example: “Silly” used to mean “holy”. The meaning drifted from holy to mean “not worldly” to meaning “naive” to meaning “a bit stupid”. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/7 "2002-06-11T12:23:32Z")
**Item** – in Latin, it meant “Also”. I’ve heard that it was used in making up lists in monasteries and such for inventory. “Also, a ladder. Also, a barrel.” In Latin this was “Item: [ladder], Item [barrel]”, so each thing came to be called an “item”. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/8 "2002-06-11T12:37:09Z")
**ass** is rarely used to mean “donkey” any more. \*\*dunce[/d] originally meant a sophisticated and overly clever thinker. **dumb** , of course, meant “mute.” **handicap** originally meant any kind of sport that had an element of chance in it and where people bet against each other. ---
**Author:** ![funkynige](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@funkynige](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/funkynige)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/9 "2002-06-11T12:39:37Z")
**professional** - used to mean a professor in something, now means gets paid for it. **ecstacy** - used to mean a state of jubilation, now means the drug. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/10 "2002-06-11T12:54:04Z")
**Toilet** used to be a more general word used to describe a variety of activities related to getting oneself ready. At the turn of the century (the one before this one) if you said “She was making her toilet,” you meant she was getting dressed. A lot of the words mentioned so far still retain their old meaning (ecstasy, gay, handicap, spin.) ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/11 "2002-06-11T13:07:47Z")
Jim B., Are you asking for a few random examples of words changing their meanings, or are you asking for every example in English? There are (at least) thousands of such examples, many of them with even more complicated and interesting histories than the ones already given. Some good books about changes in the meanings of English words are _Words in Time: A Social History of the English Vocabulary_ by Geoffrey Hughes, _Studies in Words_ by C. S. Lewis, _History in English Words_ by Owen Barfield, and _Keywords_ by Raymond Williams. ---
**Author:** ![Balor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@Balor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balor)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/12 "2002-06-11T13:48:12Z")
The word “want” has changed meaning over the centuries. Originally it meant “lack” or “need”, either a noun or a verb. “I want that” meant “I need that”. The word has moved over to its modern meaning of “desire”. In other words, it has moved from an objective statement of a lack, to a subjective feeling about lacking We still see the old-fashioned meaning in a lot of old-fashioned sayings and phrases. Wilful waste makes woeful want. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. The war on want. He wants for nothing. The new meaning is still quite recent. You will often see the old meaning used in books at least until the end of the 19th century. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/13 "2002-06-11T14:35:56Z")
I don’t think I’m taking too much of a risk by guessing that nearly every English word has suffered some change in meaning and usage over time. ---
**Author:** ![Futile\_Gesture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f05b48/32.png) [@Futile\_Gesture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Futile_Gesture)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/14 "2002-06-11T14:42:21Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Balor \* > \*\*The new meaning is still quite recent. You will often see the old meaning used in books at least until the end of the 19th century. \*\* I think you can see it far more recently, and IMHO, the word ‘want’ still retains a degree of its original meaning. See [War On Want](http://www.waronwant.org) for an example. Have to agree with **RickJay** , a lot of the examples quoted so far are very poor as they do not show a word’s meaning being completely altered. Spin still means to rotate. Ecstasy as a drug reference is already showing signs of dating, it still means a state of euphoria. ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/15 "2002-06-11T15:01:03Z")
Old ‘sleep, slept’: sleep New ‘Sleep’: sex ‘I slept with him’= I had sex with him. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/16 "2002-06-11T15:28:40Z")
> [@](#): > > Original Meaning: From the Latin decimus meaning “every tenth”, this was an ancient Roman method of weeding out traitors in their ranks. Every tenth man was selected and killed until the guilty party came forth–or was driven insane in the process . AFAIK, the decimatio wasn’t intended to weed out traitors but as the ultimate punishment for a military unit which for instance had fled the battle, or displayed some shameful behavior. ---
**Author:** ![Insecta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/3da27b/32.png) [@Insecta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Insecta)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/17 "2002-06-11T16:01:01Z")
These are some of the other examples that I don’t feel have changed their meanings in the way described: **Spin** still means rotate (although usually to rotate fast), in nearly all cases. **Ecstasy** is still used for it’s non-drug meaning, usually in more elaborate texts. The definition of **sleeping** has not changed much. For obvious reasons, it has always had a certain a sexual connection, when you are sleeping with someone. However, in neither modern or past English, has simply going to sleep, or sleeping had a sexual connotation. These are my additions: **Party** , **Impact** and **Access** have been given additional uses as a verb in recent years. Nowadays, **Brilliant** and **Excellent** are usually used as exclamation instead of descriptors. **Faggot** has had several meanings - variety of liver, bundle of sticks, unpleasant woman (apparently) before progressing to today’s homosexual association. **Albeit** is gradually becoming a synonym for although instead of through. **Virtual** has lost much of it’s original meaning beneath a pile of early nineties hype products. **Mouses** has changed from a schoolchild error to the acceptable plural for a computer mouse. ---
**Author:** ![Insecta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/3da27b/32.png) [@Insecta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Insecta)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/18 "2002-06-11T16:21:00Z")
Oh yes, and a big one I forgot: **Black**. As most of us should be aware, this used to apply to anyone non-white, but now it is exclusively used (by the PC) for people of an African ancestry ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/19 "2002-06-11T16:40:33Z")
There should be a distinction made between words like **spin** and **ecstacy** which have undergone semantic _extension_; as opposed to words like **nice** and **awful** which have undergone a true semantic shift. Consider: **wit** - once meant “knowledge” (cf. German “Wissen”). **jeopardy** - derived from French “jeu parti” (approx. “divided game”), once meant something near the old meaning of **handicap** above – a game of chance. **meat** - once meant “food”, be it vegetable, animal flesh, or grain. **starve** - once meant “to die, pass away” (cf. O.E. “steorfan”, German “gestorben, verstorben”). **beast** - once only applied to deer, elk, and other superficially similar four-legged herbivores (cf. Dutch-derived “hartebeest”). **lady** - once meant, roughly, “bread woman” (O.E. “hlaefdig”). There are thousands more of such examples in English. ---
**Author:** ![Milton\_De\_La\_Warre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e480ec/32.png) [@Milton\_De\_La\_Warre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Milton_De_La_Warre)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2002, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/20 "2002-06-11T18:58:20Z")
I go with Ascenray in the idea that most ALL words in English have changed meaning via usage over the years. Look at the OED and how almost every word has an example of its use amd meaning throughout the recorded use of the language. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414.md?page=2)