The Unexpected Evolution of Language (19 page)

As early as the 1920s, the word stopped being technical and became a generic insult to someone’s intelligence. If you’re called a moron, then you’re probably a person of “normal” intelligence who is making an extremely poor choice. Of course, now that people can gain Internet “fame” by being filmed making extremely poor choices, “moronic” behavior is “de rigueur.”

munition(s)

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
fortification

NEW DEFINITION:
weaponry (usually plural)

The roots of the word “munition” suggest walls and fortifications. Soldiers built “munitions” to keep enemies out. They used them for protection, and they used them as a launching pad for various weapons. “Munition” first began to appear in writing in the mid-fifteenth century, and it referred only to walls and fortifications at that time.

Over the next hundred years, in a metonymic shift, soldiers began to associate “munition” primarily with their weaponry storehouses. (Metonymy occurs when one object or concept is used to refer to another closely related object or concept. For example, “the Roosevelt White House” means “Roosevelt’s presidency.”) Thus, “munitions” became weapons.

About the same time English speakers turned fortifications into weaponry, French soldiers mistakenly made “la munition” into “l’ammunition.” The mistake likely was influenced by the French word, “amonition,” which means warning.

“Ammunition” spread into English and split from “munitions.” “Ammunition” refers specifically to bullets, while “munitions” include everything: cannons, guns, rifles, bullets, etc.

N

nabob

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
deputy governor in Mogul Empire

NEW DEFINITION:
someone of great wealth and importance

The late political columnist William Safire once was a speechwriter for Vice President Spiro Agnew. In that capacity, he penned Agnew’s most-remembered phrase, “nattering nabobs of negativism.” Folks who ran to their dictionaries learned that a “nabob” is a person of great wealth and importance. But before that, a nabob was a very
specific
person of wealth and importance.

The Mogul Empire (see entry for “mogul”) controlled most of the Indian subcontinent during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Moguls controlled so much that they required many deputy governors to look out for the empire’s interests.

These deputy governors were called “nawabs,” which English speakers transformed into “nabobs.” These government officials practiced the time-honored tradition of using their positions to line their own pockets. Thus, they became extremely wealthy and important.

When the British East India Company began to wrestle power away from the Moguls in the late eighteenth century, an English playwright decided the company’s directors acted a lot like “nabobs.” They made money—often by allegedly illegal means—and wielded tremendous power.

Thus, Samuel Foote wrote a play in 1772 called
The Nabob
, which satirized the British East India Company. The play helped popularize the word “nabob.”

naughty

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
needy

NEW DEFINITION:
disobedient

Originally, “naughty” meant “needy.” “Naught” meant (and still means) “nothing,” so someone “naughty” had nothing. She was poor. By the 1500s, “naughty” came to mean “vile,” “vicious,” “just plain bad.”

Like “villain” (see entry for “villain”), the word took on this connotation because people of old thought the poor were vile, apparently reasoning, “They wouldn’t be poor if they hadn’t done something to make God angry, right?!”

Despite those beginnings, “naughty” began to soften in tone. By the middle of the seventeenth century, it became a word most often associated with disobedient children who deserve to wake up to coal-filled stockings on Christmas mornings.

Santa the Stalker

John Frederick Coots and Haven Gillespie aren’t household names, but the songwriter and the lyricist, respectively, are responsible for one of the all-time Christmas classics: “Santa Claus Is Coming [sometimes Comin’] to Town.”

The song debuted in November 1934 on Eddie Cantor’s radio program. By that holiday season, sheet music orders had surpassed 400,000 copies. Hundreds of artists have covered the song, including Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson.

Yet, for all the nostalgia the song evokes, its lyrics are just downright creepy: “You better watch out,” (!), “You better not cry,” (!!) and most frightening of all, “He sees you when you’re sleeping.” (!!!)

nice

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
foolish; stupid

NEW DEFINITION:
agreeable; pleasant, as in temperament

This word has traveled more than an international businessperson.

In the fourteenth century, you wouldn’t want you or anyone in your family to be called “nice” because it meant that you or those you love were considered extremely dumb. The word’s origin is a Latin word meaning “ignorant” or “not knowing.”

“Nice” then spent the next 400 or so years adopting and then discarding new meanings. At various times, the word meant timid, fussy, and careful.

By the time the novel became a viable literary form—sometime
in the 1700s—the word had solidified to mean agreeable or pleasant or even well-bred.

Of course, “nice” continues to be a pretty elastic word. It can be used sarcastically: “Nice job, idiot.” It can be used to show extreme pleasure or approval: “Nice!” And it can be used when you need a generic, “pleasant” word: “What do you think of this flower arrangement, dear?” “Oh, it’s nice.”

nightmare

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
incubus

NEW DEFINITION:
distressing dream

Perhaps you’ve assumed the word “nightmare” has something to do with horses. A mare is a female horse, and nightmares do seem to gallop into one’s mind under the cover of darkness. But no. The “mare” in “nightmare” is a word that once meant “incubus.”

What’s an incubus? She is a female goblin or ogre who flies through your window and lands on your chest. Then, she slowly suffocates you. Isn’t that what a nightmare feels like—panic, shortness of breath, suffocation?

People were so convinced that a physical being caused this distress that a “nightmare” was believed literally to be an ogre or goblin until the sixteenth century. After that, most realized that the crushing, suffocating feeling was the emotional reaction to a bad dream.

Nightmares vs. Night Terrors

A night terror differs from a nightmare because of its severity and the fact that night terrors are more likely to affect children than adults. After a night terror, the dreamer often bolts upright and screams. To this day, one synonym for night terror is “incubus attack.”

notorious

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
well known

NEW DEFINITION:
unfavorably known

From a Latin word meaning “come to know,” “notorious” was a synonym for “notable” when it first popped up in writing during the mid-sixteenth century. Thus, royalty might be “notorious” (and not because its various members were busy swimming in the same gene pool or hard at work killing off unwanted ex-wives).

During the 1600s, “notorious” began to take on its pejorative cast, most likely because many famous people were doing bad things. People would refer to notorious smugglers or smut peddlers or crooked politicians. Eventually, the adjective so often referred to negative people and things that it became a negative word, proof of what your parents said about being judged by the company you keep.

Notorious in the Movies

Fans of classic film may associate this word with one of Alfred Hitchcock’s first great movies. The 1946 film,
Notorious
, was “notorious” in its day for Hitchcock’s creative effort to circumvent the Motion Picture Production Code’s attempts to limit onscreen kisses to three seconds.