A question of language (written in English)

The English language is a queer and ever changing creature, which in past years has been subject to so much abuse by the Australian community that I am incapable to label it anything but endangered. It's solid, tightly packed centre is becoming increasingly homogenised with rebel cells such as like and you know, while at it's squidgy, blurry edges the words thy and thine are among

many that have already broken off to drift into oblivion; or near enough, the dusty, mouldy stacks of bad public libraries.

And yet I digress. My original query is as follows:

The words horrible and horrific, the latter a derivative of the first, have relatively the same meaning, both giving an impression of something truly bad. However, in the same vein, we come across the word terrible, also used to describe a horror, BUT the word terrific has an entirely OPPOSITE meaning.

Why isn't terrific to terrible what horrific is to horrible? I know that the word terrific began with the same meaning as terrible, so what has bought about such a change in it's dynamics?

Perhaps it's the use of oxymorons. A terrific victory. A terrific goal. A terrific war. A slow erosion from the negative to the positive meaning.

Or more likely, we Australians, always disliking to keep to rules of such a sort, have grabbed this word, stuck whatever meaning against it that we liked and that didn't conform to the Poms' ideas and went on our merry way slowly demolishing our language. In this way I give the language approx. 42 years 3 days before extinction occurs and we are left with a slug, evolved from clever wit and complex meanings, to a single celled blob made of acronyms, words devoid of vowels from text messaging and those ever useful like and ya know what I mean.

You know what I mean?

NB: This is a NON-googled thought. Repeat: This is a NON-googled thought - Yes folks, it's actually possible. Where did it come from? Well, this is what happens when you read Pride and Prejudice just one too many times.

Labels: Language

Posted by *meggles* : Friday, August 25, 2006
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