Quote:
Originally Posted by barryem
The word "silly" in earlier times meant "blessed".
Barry
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My favourite is "nice", which originally meant "blunt," (
"not cutting" in Latin) hence by extension "ignorant, dull". Whenever prescriptivists rant against polysemy or insist that a word can only mean what it once did (e.g., decimate, enormity, etc) I just smile and say "that's nice"