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From: barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Semantic Reversals
Message-ID: <1775@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 20-Feb-85 21:11:29 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcrdcf.1775
Posted: Wed Feb 20 21:11:29 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 23-Feb-85 00:44:03 EST
References: <101@mot.UUCP>
Reply-To: barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold)
Organization: System Development Corp. R+D, Santa Monica
Lines: 19
Summary: 

One traditional collection of such words was in a king's supposed compliment
to the builder of St. Paul's that the cathedral was pompous, gaudy, and
awful (i.e. stately, joy-inspiring, and awe-inspiring).

Other such words include:

decimate:  originally to kill 10% of a population, now often used to mean
   killing at least half of a group.
sophisticated:  originally meaning veneered/fake
artificial:  originally meaning artistic
literally:  often used these days as a synonym for "figuratively"

Recently in a conversation with a guest from Britain, I discovered that
"prevaricate" meant to "waffle" or "straddle the issue without taking
a definitive position" in British--and to "lie" in American.  (Luckily
I've got a number of dictinaries around, including one British one, so we
were able to straighten out our misunderstanding relatively easily.)

--Lee Gold