Thursday, November 16, 2006
How some meanings have been reversed
Here's just a little something I would like to share with ya'll out there. Nothing much yet it might be intriguing to some. Enjoy.GirlIn the 13th century girl meant any young person, femala or male. To distinguish betweeb the two, a female was sometimes known as a gay girl and a male as a knave girl.IdiotOnce used to describe an ordinary person, idiot gradually came to mean a layman, as conrasted with a clergyman. Since few people outside the church were educated, the term became associated with an uneducated person, hence an ignorant or foolish one and ultimately with a person who was mentally deficient.NiceThe Latin nescius("ignorant") was the root of the English word "nice", meaning "foolish". In the 15th century nice came to mean"coy" and in the 16th century,"fastidious" as in such expressions as "a nice distinction". By the 18th century, nice had come to mean"good" or "agreeable".SophisticatedUntil relatively recently, sophisticated meant "false". To sophisticate a substance was to add artifiial ingredients; a sophisticated document was one that had been altered by forgery. In its curent meaning, the word suggests refinement and culture, without any remnants of its original sense of deception.~Arrivederci~
6:02 PM
