What gave "terrific" a positive connotation? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
How and why have some words changed to a complete opposite?
I have noticed that:
- horrible means bad
- terrible means bad
- horrific means bad
So why does terrific mean good?
Solution 1:
The meaning of terrific has actually changed over time. According to EtymOnline:
1660s, "frightening," from L. terrificus "causing terror or fear," from terrere "fill with fear" (see terrible) + root of facere "to make" (see factitious). Weakened sensed of "very great, severe" (e.g. terrific headache) appeared 1809; colloquial sense of "excellent" began 1888.
So terrific started out on the same lines as horrific, but then gained a positive colloquial sense in the late 1800s. The phenomenon in which a previously bad word takes on a good connotation is discussed here, in which it is called amelioration.
Amelioration (which has occurred for terrific, wicked, luxury) is a type of semantic change. While it is unclear what precisely happened to terrific, there are a few ways in which this change can occur:
- Linguistic forces
- Psychological forces
- Sociocultural forces
- Cultural/encyclopedic forces
You can read more about it here. It has been suggested (though there is little proof) that terrific became "good" because of an association with the popular media via King Kong. Other than this theory, though, it is clear that terrific underwent some kind of semantic change between the late 1800s and early 1900s. In 1930 Popular Science was still using the term to mean something "frightening", and by the 1940s it was used mostly to mean "good".