Semantic Weakening Turned Awfully, Terribly, and Very into Intensifiers

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jared, and I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.

Jared, welcome to the show.

Hi, Jared, what’s up?

I have a question that I’m hoping will be awfully interesting for everybody listening.

Okay.

And actually, it deals with the word awfully, and how I would use that word as an adverb.

Because the root of the word obviously is awful, which means, you know, really bad, horrible.

But when awfully is used as an adverb, I often think of it in kind of a positive sense.

Actually, what kind of spurred me on is I was reading an article.

And it was a sports article, and I tend to see it used this way a lot in sports.

And a GM of an NFL team was talking about a guy leaving.

And he said, you missed an awfully loyal, awfully qualified individual.

And obviously in that sense, he’s complimenting the guy.

And yet using this word awfully that has a root that means something bad.

And so I know from a definition standpoint, you look at the definition of awfully.

And the first definition is basically just extreme.

And so it’s used to describe an adjective or a verb as extreme.

But I’m wondering how that became the number one definition when the root word awful means something so bad, so negative.

And so I was just hoping that you could help me unlock that mystery.

Yeah, sure.

It definitely can do that.

Awfully is a complicated word, as you say, but not just because it’s changed once, but because it’s changed twice.

So let’s go back just a little further to awe itself.

If I am in awe of Martha’s talents, that means that—

If? If? What?

We’re worried to be in awe of Martha’s talents.

Subjunctive? What?

What?

Let me just use another example.

Yeah, talk about Jared.

Were I in awe of the Manchester United football team, I wouldn’t call them a team, but I’m an American.

Give me a break.

Were I to be in awe of their skills, that would mean that I was amazed by them, that they were so good that I held them in reverence, right?

And if I were awful in that particular sense, then that would mean that I was filled with awe at their abilities and their maneuvering and their skill.

And then what we found, though, in the history of English is that awful kind of changed a little bit and became a little bit more about being an intensifier and less about talking specifically about awe.

And that’s what’s happening in awfully as well.

Awfully belongs to these class of intensifying words that describe an action usually or an event in such a way to indicate that it just means more of the same or simply put, very.

So what I like to do when I talk about this class of words is use the phrase good time.

So I had an awfully good time.

I had a whopping good time.

I had a ripping good time.

A terribly good time.

A terribly good time.

A roaring good time.

I had a, you can go on and on.

You can probably think of a bunch, a spanking good time, right?

And all of these intensifiers, what happens when they become intensifiers is that there’s an incredible amount of what’s known as semantic weakening or even semantic bleaching.

Where most of their meaning is gone.

And all that’s left is this one action where they simply mean more of the same, or very.

Yeah, yeah, you go back to the 15th and the 16th century.

And awfully means so as to cause terror terribly, dreadfully.

You know, and then it’s done a flip.

But it’s not really a positive.

Because you can say, you are an awfully poor speller, right?

So that’s not positive.

It just simply means very.

And very itself actually underwent semantic weakening.

Very used to mean in truth or truthfully.

Truthfully.

Right?

And now it just means a lot or pile on some more or what have you.

Or I really, really mean this.

And Jared, your instincts were right.

It did start out as awfully as we would think of awfully being terribly.

Yeah.

Well, but before that, it meant in awe.

It was ready to the word awe, right?

And being in awe of somebody.

In awe.

In a negative way.

And I actually need to give credit to somebody because one of my friends, Ashley, who turned me on to you guys about two months ago, and I’ve been catching up on the podcast through the archives.

Her husband, actually, we were talking about this, and he said, he suggested that, that maybe it was originally awe and has undergone a couple changes like that.

So I have to give him credit because he was kind of on point with that.

Exactly. Very good.

Very cool.

So if you want to find out more about this, I would recommend looking up the term semantic weakening.

Just Google that.

You’ll come across some highfalutin talk, but it should be comprehensible even to somebody who doesn’t have a specialty in linguistics.

Is it highfalutin or awfully highfalutin?

It is frightfully highfalutin.

Embarrassingly highfalutin. Excellent.

Jared, thank you for calling today.

Bye-bye.

Take care. Bye.

Language is not logical. It’s not math, right?

No, it’s not.

So there are these borders to the meanings of words that just kind of vaguely fade off.

They gradate into the distance, right?

It’s beautiful, yes. Porous borders of language.

Porous borders of language.

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