Today, the dictionary can be updated with just a few keystrokes online, but even when it was a more arduous process to edit and publish new printed editions, the English language was in a constant state of flux. Many of the most commonly used words today carried entirely different meanings centuries ago. The technical term for this linguistic transformation is “semantic change.” In some cases, it has resulted in shifts so dramatic that the original meaning of a word is entirely different — and sometimes even the opposite — of its current usage. Here, we examine six words that used to mean something completely different, from gender-specific nouns to the changing meanings of “naughty” and “nice.”
Many people today would like to live a life of luxury, but back in the 1300s, if you told someone you were seeking luxury, you might raise an eyebrow or two. Originally, the English word “luxury” meant “sexual intercourse,” and by the end of the century, “lasciviousness,” “debauchery,” and “lust.” This all came from the Latin luxuria, used to express ideas of desire, excess and deviation from a standard. Shakespeare used the word — in its lustful sense — in the 1600 play Much Ado About Nothing, when Claudio accuses Hero of being unchaste: “She knows the heat of a luxurious bed. / Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty.” At some point during the 17th century, the word began to lose its provocative connotation and took on its current usage, referring to great comfort, extravagant living, and the use of wealth for nonessential pleasures.
Originally, “girl” wasn’t gender-specific. In the 14th century, “girl” or “gyrle” referred to a child or young person, regardless of their gender. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (written in Middle English between 1387 and 1400), when the author refers to the “younge girles of the diocese” in the prologue, he is talking about children in general. “Girl” became specific to females sometime around the early 1500s, and referred to young women or female children by the 1650s.
If you’ve ever thought that “bully” was too soft a word for a playground or workplace oppressor, you might be on to something. The origins of “bully” are found in the 16th century, when it was a term of endearment similar to “sweetheart” or “darling” (possibly taken from the Dutch boel, meaning “lover”). Shakespeare was particularly fond of the word, using it as a term of affection in several of his plays, including Henry V (“I kiss his dirty shoe, and from heartstring I love the lovely bully”), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (“O, sweet bully Bottom!”), and The Merry Wives of Windsor (“God bless thee, bully doctor!”).
In the 17th century, “bully” evolved, with its meaning declining from “fine fellow” to “blusterer” and then to the entirely negative “harasser of the weak.” This latter meaning is the closest to our current usage of “bully” as someone who intimidates or harms others, especially those they perceive as vulnerable.
The word “clue” comes from Greek mythology. In the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, Ariadne gives Theseus a ball of thread, known as a “clew,” so that he can use it to find his way out of her father’s labyrinth. The clew of Greek mythology then came to be used as a word for anything that guides or directs. The spelling “clue” emerged sometime in the mid-15th century, and held on to both of its meanings. In 1869, for example, Hugh Miller refers to “a small clue of yarn” in Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland, while Charlotte Brontë, in the 1849 novel Shirley, uses the word in the sense familiar to us today: “You may just inform him that I have got a clue to the identity of one, at least, of the men who broke my frames.”
“Naughty” derives from “naught,” meaning “nothing,” which leads us to its original usage. In the 14th century, a naughty person was someone who had nothing, being poor or needy. The meaning then evolved — unfortunately, due to its connection with the poor — into something more in line with “morally bad” or “wicked.” From the 1600s onward, the word began to settle into its current, less severe usage of “mischievous” or “badly behaved,” often in reference to children. In the mid-1800s, “naughty” developed a secondary meaning of “sexually promiscuous” — a meaning it still holds today, although it’s normally used in a toned-down, playful manner.
Today, “nice” is a perfectly amiable, if somewhat bland, way to state that something or someone is pleasant or agreeable. But the original meaning of the word is very different. It comes from the Latin word nescius, meaning “ignorant.” From there, “nice” went on an epic journey of linguistic evolution. It meant “foolish” or “simple” in the late 13th century, “dainty” or “delicate” around the 1400s, “precise” or “careful” in the 1500s, and then took on its more complimentary significance as “agreeable” or “delightful” in the mid-1700s, before it became “kind” or “thoughtful” by 1830. In another twist, Shakespeare used it to mean “wanton” or “lascivious,”— he refers to dissolute women as “nice wenches” in Love’s Labour’s Lost — although that usage didn’t become widespread. Today, “nice” is a standard, uncontroversial word, only ever frowned upon due to its overuse rather than its meaning.
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