Is the use of the word “terrible” in a positive sense at all common?
I recently had an argument with one gentleman where he charged that he had heard the word terrible being used in a positive sense, as if something was good, or great. I had lived in the States for over 12 years where I was exposed to different strata of society from PhDs to lowly construction workers and warehouse serfs one of whom I was as well. I have heard people talk of all sorts of bad, brutal, sick, even ill, and generally awesome things, but I had never encountered the word terrible being used that way, even in this age of ironic hipsters.
In the question about the origins of the word, few people pointed out that in French the word terrible does have a positive colloquial meaning, which is confirmed by several dictionaries. Likewise, English dictionaries acknowledge different meanings for the sister word terrific pointing that the meaning of fantastic and the like is informal, and the meaning of inspiring terror is archaic. But no respectable dictionary I had checked does mention any sort of ambiguity in regards of terrible.
The only source known to me as yet that acknowledges the positive sense of terrible is Urban Dictionary, and even there it has been consistently downvoted. Yet, it still received some votes, so at least some people think there is a legitimacy to this claim. Is there anything to this at all? Is that some sort of new phenomenon, or is it utterly misguided? If it is indeed real, are there any examples of such usage in popular culture?
Solution 1:
The OED’s first definition is ‘causing or fit to cause terror; inspiring great fear or dread. Also: awe-inspiring, awesome’, but the only citation that might be thought to use ‘terrible’ in a positive sense is this from Swinburne ‘Superb instances of terrible beauty undeformed by horrible detail.’ Yeats uses the word in a similar way in this line (not in the OED) from ‘Easter 1916’: ‘A terrible beauty is born.’
The answer in brief is that terrible only rarely has anything other than a negative sense, and that if we use it in any other way we need to know what we’re doing, and, in particular, we need to be sure that our readers or listeners will understand how we’re using it.
Solution 2:
If the word terrible is being used much in a positive way, even as a slang term, it has not been noticed by the lexicographers. Up to now, the least negative sense of terrible is as an intensifier, as in
1853 KANEGrinnell Exp. xxxiv. (1856) 301 Even you, terrible worker as you are, could not study in the Arctic regions.¹
and even this example conjures up a sense of an overwhelming, possibly frightening, force of will. One may even be reminded of Mary Shelley’s monster, who has such terrible strength that he is able to sustain his life in the Arctic.
Barry England is careful in his answer not to make much of his Swinburne and Yeats citations
the only citation that might be thought to use ‘terrible’ in a positive sense is this from Swinburne ‘Superb instances of terrible beauty undeformed by horrible detail.’ Yeats uses the word in a similar way in this line … from ‘Easter 1916’: ‘A terrible beauty is born.’²
and that is just as well. These are both incontestably terrible in the usual sense, juxtaposed with beauty to create a contrast for rhetorical effect. Yeats’ “terrible beauty” juxtaposes the terrible execution of revolutionaries with the beauty (as he saw it) of their sacrifice on behalf of the Irish people.³ He could just as easily have written “dreadful beauty”. In the same way, Swinburne’s “terrible beauty” juxtaposes the beauty of certain dramatic poetry with its terrible subject, specifically that of Cyril Tourneur
which makes incision in the memory … the grandest verses of Marston or Chapman … have less of cautery in their stroke
and that of John Webster
in his handling of criminal and terrible matter.⁴