this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2025
720 points (98.8% liked)
Funny: Home of the Haha
7695 readers
919 users here now
Welcome to /c/funny, a place for all your humorous and amusing content.
Looking for mods! Send an application to Stamets!
Our Rules:
-
Keep it civil. We're all people here. Be respectful to one another.
-
No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia or any other flavor of bigotry. I should not need to explain this one.
-
Try not to repost anything posted within the past month. Beyond that, go for it. Not everyone is on every site all the time.
Other Communities:
-
/c/TenForward@lemmy.world - Star Trek chat, memes and shitposts
-
/c/Memes@lemmy.world - General memes
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Time basically.
Some of it is because of Irony. Similar to how people in the 80/90s use the word "Bad" to mean "Really Good", other words changed meaning because of ironic usage.
Egregious used to mean "rising above the flock, exceptional, distinguished." People kept using it ironically so much that it now means exceptionally bad or distinguished by being particularly bad.
Other words have had a more gradual evolution to their opposites, like "Nice". It originally meant foolish or weak. During the middle ages it came to mean shy, reserved, or fastidious, but those qualities were still considered 'weak'. In the late 1700s society began to see merit in those qualities and so being 'nice' was no longer a foolish or bad thing to be.
Same thing with phrases and idioms. Hundreds of years can have a weird effect on language.