Travis in Bozeman, Montana, wonders why awesome feels positive while awful is negative, even though both come from awe. Awful is the older word, going back at least a thousand years, when it meant “full of awe,” commanding respect or reverential fear, before shifting toward “terrible” or “causing dread.” Awesome came centuries later as “awe-inspiring,” then weakened in everyday use to mean “cool,” “fantastic,” or “wonderful.” Early Bible translations could call God “mighty and awful,” while later ones may use “mighty and awesome.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““Awful” Once Meant Full of Awe Before It Meant Terrible”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi.
Hi, who’s this?
This is Travis Kidd. I’m calling from Bozeman, Montana.
Hi, Travis.
Hey, Travis.
What’s up?
Well, I had a question about a pair of words that has always confused me.
So the two words are awesome and awful.
So awesome tends to be used with a positive connotation, whereas awful is always negative.
Yet they both have their root in the word awe, which I don’t think of as being a negative feeling at all.
Any theories on that?
Well, yeah, I guess I suspect my confusion stems from the common use and sort of overuse of the word awesome.
It’s not really used anymore to inspire the terrifying power of God.
Now it just means cool or that’s good.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I kind of suspect, like, is it the diluted potency that makes it so confusing now?
The diluted potency.
Yeah, it’s definitely, it’s like the cheap liquor behind the bar that’s been watered down so much it’s more water than liquor.
Yeah, right. Now it’s just used for describing Michael Bay movies.
Yeah, it is a bit confusing, isn’t it?
We can tell you that the word awful is a whole lot older than the word awesome.
The word awful goes back at least a thousand years.
Yeah.
Wow.
And it meant, as you suggested, full of awe, that is commanding awe or commanding respect or reverential fear.
And then it sort of evolved into the sense that we think of it today, the terrible, appalling or causing dread.
And it was hundreds of years later that the word awesome came along, meaning awe-inspiring, but not necessarily with negative connotations like that.
It’s really interesting in the book of Deuteronomy, early translations of the Bible talk about, in a particular verse, it talks about God being mighty and awful.
And then later translations of it often say God being mighty and awesome.
And both today ring weird, right?
Yeah.
Mighty and awesome.
Yeah.
Some say mighty and terrible.
It kind of like the only word pair that I can think that sort of holds true to that is like fearsome and fearful.
But that makes sense to me.
Like fearsome is inspiring fear and fearful is just being afraid.
Yeah.
But those seem to sort of have the same connotation.
They’re both sort of negative, whereas awesome and awful are sort of positive versus negative.
So, yeah, that’s kind of where my confusion always lies.
Yeah, and it’s confusing because the sum in awesome means having the quality of awe.
So it sort of depends on what the awe is, like toothsome is something that’s delicious.
But these words just kind of diverged and filled different places in the language now.
And at some point they break from their etymological roots, and we can’t use etymology as a guide.
Right.
It’s just a starting point.
It’s not the end point for the meaning of a word.
Well, cool.
I think that definitely clears it up a bit for me, and it’ll be interesting to hear if anyone else had the same confusion.
Oh, I’m sure.
I think people often have that, and we often get complaints about the word awesome these days.
It tends to be overuse, though.
That’s the complaint.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Watered down, as you said.
In the last, what, 30 years or so?
Yeah, yeah, we get complaints about that all the time.
Well, Travis, thanks so much for calling.
Thanks, Travis.
Yeah, thanks for the answer.
Yeah, sure.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
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