![]() This suggests you should encourage employees to explore new fields or hire more generalists - they can connect dots where others don’t see a link. This list was first published in 2015 and republished in 2019.What’s the best way to boost creativity on your team? One view is that the key to creative breakthroughs is being able to combine or leverage different areas of expertise. It then came to stand for a swaggering braggart and than a coward who picks on others. A bully could be a good friend or a sweetheart. Bullyīully used to be a term of endearment for men or women. It is still connected with a type of humor, but with an unproductive or annoying connotation. It came from a Latin term for playful humorousness. To be facetious was once to have elegant, gracious, high style, and to be jokey and witty. ![]() Deviousĭevious comes from de via, "off the way." It once meant "distant" or "off the road." It took on the meaning of wandering-there were devious comets, devious minnows-and, because to do wrong was to stray from the right path, it eventually came to mean "scheming and deceitful." 12. Smug first meant "crisp, tidy, and presentable." A well-dressed person was smug in this way, and it later came to mean "self-satisfied and conceited." 11. Sad started with the meaning of "satisfied or sated," also sometimes "steadfast" or "firm." It then went from meaning "serious," to "grave," to "sorrowful." 10. It used to mean "eminent and distinguished," but because people started using it sarcastically, it came to mean "bad and offensive." 9. EgregiousĮgregious was a positive word that turned negative. ![]() Shakespeare’s Henry VI has the phrase “as smart as lizards’ stings.” It took on connotations of sharpness, quickness, intensity, and, through smart, pain-causing words or wit came to stand for quick intelligence and fashionableness. Smart was first used in Old English to describe things that cause pain. It then became the term for a forced, fake smile, before settling into an expression of happiness. To grin was to bare the teeth in a threatening display of anger or pain. While awful retains the negative sense, awesome took on the positive one. AweĪccording to the Oxford English Dictionary, awe originally referred to “immediate and active fear.” It then became associated with religious, reverential fear, and then to a feeling of being humbled at the sublime. It also became an intensifier (“tremendously good!”) before it went all the way positive. Something tremendous was so terrible it caused trembling or shaking. Like terrific, tremendous has its roots in fear. It then became an exaggerated intensifier (“terrifically good!” = so good it’s terrifying) and then a positive term all on its own. The root of terrific is terror, and it first meant terror-inducing. Now it’s positive, but at root, being fond of something is basically being a fool for it. Fondįond also goes back to fon, and it once meant "foolish and weak-minded." It came to then mean over-affectionate in a negative, cloying way. Funįun was first a verb meaning "to cheat or hoax." It came from fon, an old word for "fool." It still retains some of that sense in “make fun of,” but now also means "a merry good time." 2. Here are 13 fine, upstanding words that long ago switched from negative to positive (or vice versa). While some would lament the decline of language suggested by such wanton disregard for word meaning, this kind of meaning switch is nothing new. In recent decades we’ve seen sick, wicked, ill, and bad recruited to the “hearty positive endorsement” side. A favorite trick for the young to play on the old is to take an established word and completely change its connotations from bad to good. Making up new words is one way to achieve this, but it’s not the only one. One of the main reasons for the existence of slang is to keep the outsiders from understanding the insiders.
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