Etymology of words
Etymology is the study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history. often many words completely change meaning overtime and mean the opposite if its previous meaning. one word that has done this is the word awful. the current definition used for the word awful is "used to emphasize the extent of something, especially something unpleasant or negative." therefore currently the word would generally describe something negative or something that wasn't enjoyable eg: "it was awful." it has however not always been associated to have a negative meaning. In the 1300s it had much more positive connotations linked to it. It originally meant "aspiring wonder" and was a short way of saying being in awe of someone/something. To be in awe of would generally be linked with having great respect for somebody and would generally be perceived as a compliment if someone were to say they were in awe of you. Therefore the word has gone under a semantic change of auto-antonymy where a word changes meaning to the complete opposite of what it originally meant. Another example of this would be the word "bad." The word generally has a negative meaning towards it however in recent times it has more positive connotations linked with it and in some scenarios the word bad is used to describe something that is good.
