Pejoratively Speaking

From Language Weaver:

If you are old enough to have attended elementary school several decades ago, there was a person there called the “janitor” whose job was to maintain the building. At some point, however, the term came to be considered demeaning; it was more polite to call him the “custodian.” Add a few more years of history and now that term is too demeaning. The current polite term is “building manager” or even “building engineer.” Or in New York apartments, "super." Wasn't the old word good enough?

Pejoration, the degeneration of the meaning of a word, is as old as language itself. It happens frequently with words that are used euphemistically to refer to a concept that is disrespected or taboo. In current U.S. culture that includes the names of lower-status jobs. Thus the person driving the trash truck went from “trash collector” through “refuse collector” to “sanitation worker.” “Babysitter” seems to be working its way toward “nanny.”

The history of English provides splendid examples of semantic degeneration. See if you can devise an explanation for the path these words have taken.

* egregious (16th-19th centuries) ‘prominent, outstanding’→ now ‘gross, flagrant’
* officious (16th-20th centuries) ‘dutiful, obliging’ → now ‘pompous, self-important’
* plausible (16th-19th centuries) ‘worthy of applause’ → now ‘believable’
* silly (17th century) ‘weak, helpless’ → (19th century) ‘sickly’ → now ‘foolish’
* toilet ( 17th-19th centuries) ‘cover for a dressing table’ → now ‘privy, john, loo’ – supply your own favorite. This concept is an unquenchable source of new euphemisms.

The degeneration of these terms took place longer ago:

* cnafa (Old English) ‘boy’ → knave ‘unprincipled male person’
* cræftig (Old English) 'strong, skillful' → crafty 'cunning, wily'
* huswif (Anglo-Saxon) ‘housewife’ → hussy ‘an immoral woman’
* idiotis (Greek) ‘private citizen’ → idiot ‘stupid person’ (By the way, this used to be a technical term for a particular class of mental retardation, but that usage is now taboo.)
* lewd (Old English) 'non-ecclesiastical, lay' → 'sexually insinuating'
* libellum (Latin) ‘booklet, note’ → libel ‘defamatory statement’
* notorius (Medieval Latin) ‘well known’ → notorious ‘infamous’
* peirates (Greek) ‘entrepreneur’ → pirate ‘one who preys on others’
* reken (Middle English) 'to emit smoke' → reek 'to stink'
* sinister (Latin) ‘facing to the left’ → sinister ‘ominous’
* vulgaris (Latin) ‘of the people’ → vulgar ‘rude’