Note: Andy Newman will be teaching The Theo-epic of Salvation: An Introduction to the Holy Scriptures this fall online for Kepler. Class begins Sept. 8. Early registration ends July 15. The class works well for home-schooled students, as well as those attending private or public schools, since the class meets online weekly from 7-8:15 a.m. MT, Saturday.
This essay originally in the Scottsbluff (Neb.) Star-Herald on Oct. 13, 2017.
Words, the novelist Walker Percy maintained, have a way of wearing down through repeated use over time. They become more Appalachia than Rocky Mountains, more Chimney (mini) Rock than the lofty spire that greeted the westward pioneers.
I can think of any number of words that have eroded over time. Awful used to mean, as one who looks closely at the word might surmise, “full of awe,” not that lunch was on the less than appealing and appetizing side. Yesterday’s tacos, according to the traditional definition, cannot be truly awful unless they have a pillar of smoke before them by day and a pillar of fire by night.
Awesome never recovered from the early 1980s when it collapsed into meaning that something is swell or nifty. Like awesome, as Sarah Jessica Parker would say back in the day when she was a Square Peg and not chasing Sex in the City.
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