This weekend, while listening to a message on our need to be holy and righteous before God and man, I was sidetracked mentally by the evolution of a couple words.
The first word is ashamed. This word struck me funny because the most common use of the prefix "a" is "not" or "without." And while an additional meaning is certainly explanatory to ashamed's usage (meaning "to be in the condition of" like abuzz), it certainly is ironic that the most common understanding of ashamed would read exactly opposite of how it is used. We live in a world where people are encouraged to only be ashamed about being ashamed about anything. And while there's plenty here for a theological treatise in and of itself, I continue on topic.
Conversely, The second word is awful. The word still as an accepted meaning of "to be filled with awe," but it is almost never used that way. Now its primary usage is to describe something incredibly bad or horrible. I could never say "I'm awful in the presence of God," without it being misunderstood (even though the misunderstood meaning would be theologically correct if it weren't for the redemption of Jesus, who is the Christ).
Over time, we've completed changed what words mean. The classical meaning of ashamed now is only perceived if you add the additional prefix to get to unashamed, which if you break it down means, not not ashamed. And the only way to even approach the classical meaning of awful is to use the less powerful word awesome. By doing so, you completely lose the degree of awe which one is describing, unless of course you add the modifier (repeatedly, if necessary) really.
We should be ashamed that our vernacular is so awful.
On a quasi-related note, Richard fights to reclaim an important word, hat tip to Randy.
March 30, 2004 11:25 AMHow hard was it to get your blog to your personal url? any recommendations?
Posted by: matt at March 30, 2004 12:20 PMI recommend you ask these questions to Tony (his contact info is at the top left of my page)...he's a tech guy who just did the swapover himself.
I'm not a good resource to answer your question because I had a group of talented people who made my change successful. On my own, I never would have done it.
Posted by: Bryan at March 30, 2004 12:57 PM