Sunday 4 March 2012

Terrific

Terrific (adjective)
1. Extraordinarily great or intese
2. Extremely good
3. Causing terror
I've just been wondering about the word "terrific". It comes from the Latin "terrere", which means to be filled with fear or "terrificus", which means to cause terror or fear. It seems to me however that nowadays most people use terrific in a very positive sense.
"My son is the best. He's got terrific grades in school. All A's. He even got awarded this grant" - Proud dad.
I'm just pondering about it.

2 comments: