by Dr. Karen Wieland and James Currie

 

 

So far we have taken brief looks at a related pair of word-meaning shifts: from an earlier narrow meaning to a broader, more general meaning (generalization) and its semantic opposite, as it were, from a broader, general meaning to a narrow, specific meaning (specialization). With this post, we’d like to look at the first of a similarly paired word-meaning shifts, in this case for better or for worse. 

Amelioration

Amelioration – pronounced like the woman’s name Amelia plus the word ration, but rhyming with nation – is the process where a word’s meaning moves from an original negative meaning to a more positive meaning.

Etymology of Amelioration

The word “amelioration” itself comes to us, as so very many words do, via Old French, from Latin. In Latin, ‘melior’ means “better” and the verb “meliorare”, “to improve”. In Old French, the sense of motion was emphasized by the Latin prefix “ad-”  meaning “to, towards”. And that precisely describes how amelioration works: the word’s negative meaning is moved towards something better, something more positive. This process can also be referred to as “upgrading” or “elevation”

Examples

As always, some examples to illustrate the process would be nice, so let’s start right there….with “nice”.

So Nice

Originally, “nice” was not a nice thing to call someone. You see, it comes from the Latin word “nescius”, which literally means “doesn’t know”, or “ignorant, unaware”. English adopted the word in the late 1200s from Old French “nice” which meant a whole bunch of things, none of them nice: “careless, clumsy, weak, simple, stupid, silly, foolish.”

But then, things changed…a lot. It started in late Old-/early Middle English when the meaning moved to “timid, faint-hearted,” maybe a focus on the Old French meaning “weak”. By the late 1300s, it had shifted to mean “fussy, fastidious”, still not nice.

But by the year 1400, a big shift had occurred and “nice” came to mean “dainty, delicate” then in the 1500s to “precise, careful”. By the late 1700s, “nice” was finally a nice word: “agreeable, delightful” and from 1830 onwards, it means “kind, thoughtful”. All it took was some 600 years.

And So Pretty

In Old English, “prættig” or “prettig” meant “cunning, skillful, wily, astute” with focus on mental attributes. This meaning stuck with the word into the Middle English period (“cunning, crafty, clever”).

By around 1400 CE, the meaning had shifted to “manly, gallant”, still personal attributes. But it also gained the meaning “cleverly made” for objects. The latter distinction – describing physical attractiveness, not mental qualities – prevailed and by around 1450, the meaning had shifted to “beautiful in a slight way” for people and “fine, pleasing” for things. It may be challenging to identify the amelioration here, but “cleverly made” objects are not necessarily pleasant to the eye.

And an Awfully Terrible and Terrific Example

Three examples, actually, all for the price of one. Three awfully common modern words together serve as terrific examples of amelioration.

“Terrific,” “terribly,” and “awfully” were, a long time ago, horrible words. All three of them are derived from roots meaning “fear” or “dread”.

In the 14th century, something “aueful” was “worthy of respect or fear, causing dread”. And both “terrific” and “terrible” come from Latin “terrēre”, meaning “to frighten, scare”.

But by the early 1800s, “awful” had weakened in two directions: First, “very bad” but not necessarily dreadful (retaining that sense of dread) as in “This tastes awful!” Secondly, “excessively, very great” as in “A whale is an awfully big animal.”

A similar process moved “terrific” and “terrible” from “causing fear” to “severe”, as in “a terrible headache” or “a terrific accident.”  But “terrific” shifted once more by the end of the 19th century, by which time its meaning had almost reversed completely to “excellent,” which was a terrific idea, wasn’t it?

Next Post: From Better to Worse

As I hinted at earlier in this post, amelioration has a partner in crime – pejoration. We’ll take a look at it in the next post.

 

REFERENCES:

Nordquist, Richard (2019, October 3). Amelioration (word meanings) (Glossary of Grammatical and Rhetorical Terms – Definition and Examples.) New York: Thought Co. Retrieved on December 11, 2023, from https://www.thoughtco.com/semantic-narrowing-specialization-1689082

Harper, Douglas (2021). Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved on December 12, 2023, from etymonline.com