Words, whether we like them or not, are extremely important. Unfortunately, some of them can also be incredibly difficult, especially when pretty much everyone - from grammar Nazis to news reporters to Presidents - get their meanings wrong to the point where nobody is actually sure of what anything really means anymore. These are words that everyone so commonly misuses that the dictionary has taken pity on us and eventually changed the definition of. You may have aced all your vocabulary tests in high school, spelt out all your tweets correctly, fancied yourself quite the linguist or you may even be a professional writer; the thing is sometimes the English language throws us the curviest of curveballs that even the best of us can't keep up with. As such, the following list has been compiled of nine such words alongside their perceived and actual definitions, so that you can either pat yourself on the back for knowing, or file and save for later to tout your linguistic knowledge over the rest of the plebeians who dont know to put a space between a and lot.
9. Terrific
What People Think It Means/What It Means Now: Extraordinarily good; awesome. What It Used To Mean: Causing terror. Terrific has one of the more interesting etymologies; it shares a root with terrible, and thats exactly what it used to mean, similarly to horrible and horrific. So, what happened to make a word with negative connotations, now be used almost ubiquitously as positive these days? The answer is, well, nothing in particular really. Something called a semantic change occurred somewhere between then and now, and the common meaning of terrific was randomly flipped on its head to become the exact opposite of what it used to be, similarly to words like awful or awesome. Thats the great thing about language: it appears to be all collected and rational, but, really, it mimics human irregularity like nothing else.
Canadian student. Spends probably an unhealthy amount of time enthusing over musicals, unpopular TV shows, and Harry Potter. Main life goal: to become fluent in Elvish.
