Ain’t It Awful?

By William Germano. Recently I was at a dinner party where people were using the words awful  and awesome, possibly as antonyms. Awful  was, I thought, used to describe something very bad, awesome something very good. The words awesome and awful have been doing do-si-do with one another for a while. So are they the same word? And if so, what word is that, exactly?
The Oxford English Dictionary records awful as medieval. Since the ninth century, it’sbeen the high-toned term of choice meaning “awe-inspiring,” in the sense of “causing dread; terrible, dreadful, appalling.” But awful is also “worthy of, or commanding, profound respect or fear,” and has been in that sense for almost as long.
Awful seems to sustain a body blow at the beginning of the 19^th century, when it takes on the meaning “frightful, very ugly, monstrous; and hence as a mere intensive deriving its sense from the context = Exceedingly bad, great, long, etc.” A mere intensive? Say it isn’t so. More...