國中英語基測出現過 silly 的考題。

Did you know the meaning of a word may change over time? Many English words we know now had different meanings a long time ago. One example is the word nice.

Around the year 1300, nice was first used in English to mean ‘stupid.’ Two hundred years later, nice began to carry a “better” meaning. If people said a book was written nicely, they meant the book was written ‘clearly’ or ‘carefully,’ not ‘stupidly.’ After 1800, nice began to take its modern meanings like ‘kind’ or ‘friendly.’ Since then, people have thought of nice as a word with “good” meanings.

A “good” change of a word’s meaning like this example of nice is called AMELIORATION. Though we don’t use nice to mean ‘stupid’ anymore, it is fun to know how much a word’s meaning can change from its start!


For more examples of AMELIORATION, see next page.

meaning 意思；意義
1.
Here are four sentences from the Word Museum. Which is most likely to appear on the next page?
likely 可能
The word terrific used to mean ‘terrible,’ but now it means ‘excellent.’
The word telephone is cut short to phone, but the two words mean the same thing.
The word silly used to mean ‘happy,’ but now it means ‘stupid.’
The word girl used to mean ‘a young person,’ but now it means ‘a young woman.’
2.
What can we learn about the word nice?
It still keeps its old meaning that was used around 1300.
It was used to talk about an important person around 1800.
It was first used in English around 1100.
It started to mean ‘clear’ around 1500.