Lionesses v Mathildas..

I'm pretty sure that when English was first starting to be written, both words would have been written with several variant spellings. If William Shakespeare spelled his surname several different ways depending on his mood, what hope was there for a common or garden word such as awful/aweful/awefull/awfull?

 

The word Awful (Awe-full - in full of awe)was originally the same as Awesome. But gradually was used to describe the negative aspect of Awe (dread etc) and the e was dropped overtime as the word Awesome became more commonly used to separate the similarity out.

 

Terrible and terrific also used to mean the same thing. It's interesting how similar things have happened across languages which clearly evolved separately. Across Slavic languages, there are words which clearly have the same root, but have evolved to mean opposite things. One of the most amusing is the word "urod", which means "beauty" in Polish, yet in Russian it means "hideous monster". Both have the same root, "rod", meaning "birth".

 

That’s true. It’s the same as ‘sublime’. It meant impressive, but oh fcking hell, the natural world, here we go..!!.