Awful

Awful (pronounced aw-fuhl)

(1) Extremely bad; unpleasant; ugly.

(2) Inspiring fear; dreadful; terrible.

(3) Solemnly impressive; inspiring awe; full of awe; reverential (obsolete).

(4) Extremely dangerous, risky, injurious, etc.

(5) Very; extremely.

1250-1300: From the Middle English agheful, awfull, auful aueful & aȝefull (worthy of respect or fear, striking with awe; causing dread), the construct of all based on the idea of awe +‎ -ful (aghe the earlier form of awe), the same model as the Old English eġeful & eġefull (terrifying; awful).  Etymologists treat the emergence in the early nineteenth century (1809) of the meaning “very bad” as a weakening of the original sense but it can be regarded as a fork and thus a parallel path in the same way as the sense of "excessively; very great" which is documented since 1818.  Interestingly, there’s evidence from the late sixteenth century that was spasmodic use of awful that was more a variation of the original, meaning “profoundly reverential, full of awe” (awe in this case a thing more of reverence than fear and trepidation).  The spellings awfull, aweful & awefull are all obsolete although some dictionaries list awfull as archaic, a fine distinction of relevance only to lexicographers.  Awful is an adjective & (in colloquial US use, mostly south of the Mason-Dixon Line) an adverb, awfully is an adverb, awfuller & awfullest are adjectives, awfulize is a verb and awfulization & awfulness are nouns; in slang the non-standard noun plural “awfuls” is used in the same sense as the disparaging “ghastlies”.

The adverb awfully (which would later assume a life of its own) around the turn of the fourteenth century meant "so as to inspire reverence" by the end of the 1300s had come also to mean "dreadfully, so as to strike one with awe (in the sense of “fear & dread”) and this was by the 1830s picked up as a simple intensifier meaning "very, exceedingly", Henry Fowler (1858–1933) in his A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) noting with his usual weary disapproval that awfully’s “downward path” was such that it was now nothing but a synonym of “very”.  That seems harsh given “awfully” would seem able to convey a nuance and even Henry Fowler conceded that in Ancient Greek the equivalent word αἰνόςως (ainósōs) was used to mean both (1) “horribly, dreadfully, terribly” & (2) “very, extremely, exceptionally” but despite his reverence for all things Hellenic, he didn’t relent.

Awfully good: Lindsay Lohan at the premiere of Mr & Mrs Smith, Los Angeles, June, 2005.  A kind of elaborated bandage dress with some nice detailing, the dress Lindsay Lohan wore in 2005 attracted much favourable comment, as did the designer's sense of restraint, necklaces and other embellishments eschewed, a sprinkle of freckles presumably thought adornment enough.  A dress like this encapsulates the simple rule: When in doubt, stick to the classics.

The adjective god-awful (also as godawful) had an even more muddled evolution, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in 1878 listing the meaning “impressive” before, a decade later, revising this to “impressively (ie “very”) terrible”, which seems better to reflect the sense in which it seems always to have been applied since being coined as a colloquialism of US English.  In use it’s thought to have been mostly part of oral speech and except in dictionary entries appeared rarely in print prior to the 1920s so the origin is obscure, etymologists pondering that either “God” was used as a simple intensifier or in the sense of the frequent God's awful vengeance, judgment etc, a phrase common in religious literature.

As adjectives, the usual forms of the comparative & superlative are respectively more awful & most awful but dictionaries continue to acknowledge awfuller & awfullest as correct English although most users would probably flag both as “wrong” and their clumsy sound means they’re avoided even by those aware of their status.  The verbs awfulize, awfulizes, awfulizing & awfulized are technical terms in psychotherapy which describe patients reacting dramatically or catastrophically to distressing events, usually in the sense of a disproportionate reaction; the noun form is awfulization.  Perhaps surprisingly, social media users seem not to have picked up “awfulization”; it would seem a handy descriptor of much content.

A sentence like “it was a godawful book and awfully long but awfully well-written” actually makes sense and few would be confused because the various meanings are conveyed by context.  So, despite the tangled history, awful and its derivatives usually present few problems, even the colloquial “something awful” (“awfully; dreadfully; terribly” except in North America (mostly south of the Mason-Dixon Line & among classes so influenced) where it means “very, extremely”) usually able to be decoded: “I was hungry something awful” and “there’s something awful about crooked Hillary Clinton” both unambiguous even if the former sounds strange to those accustomed to “educated speech”, a term much criticized but well-understood.

Awful: Lindsay Lohan at the afterparty for Roberto Cavalli's fashion show, Milan Fashion Week, March 2010.  Although they tend to group-think, fashion critics are not monolithic but none had a good word to say about this outfit, the consensus being: Awful.  A few grudgingly granted a pass to the glittering Roberto Cavalli harem pants but the fur gilet was condemned as if Ms Lohan had with her bare hands skinned a live mink, eating the liver; these days, even faux fur seems grounds for cancellation.  Some, presumably those who picked up a photo from the agencies, called it a stole and at certain angles it resembled one but it really was as gilet.  As a footnote, many did admire the Fendi platform pumps so there was that though nobody seemed to think they redeemed things.

Gilet was from the French gilet (vest, waistcoat), from the regional Italian gileccu (Calabria), gilecco (Genoa), gelecco (Naples) & ggileccu (Sicily), (though the standard Italian gilè was borrowed directly from the French), from the Turkish yelek (jelick; vest, waistcoat, from the Proto-Turkic yẹl (the noun of “wind”) with the final syllable modified to match other styles of garments such as corselet and mantelet.  Historically a gilet was (1) a man’s waistcoat & (2) a woman’s bodice a la the waistcoat or a decorative panel either attached to the bodice or worn separately.  In modern use, a gilet is a sleeveless jacket which can be closed to the neck and is often padded to provide warmth.  Some puffer jackets and garments described as bodywarmers can be classed as gilets.

Stole was from the Old English stole, from the Latin stola, from the Ancient Greek στολή (stolḗ) (stole, garment, equipment).  The original stoles were ecclesiastical vestments and were decorated bands worn on the back of the neck, each end hanging over the chest (reaching sometimes to the ground) and could, inter alia, be an indication of clerical rank, geographical location or membership of an order.  In English and European universities, stoles were also adopted as academic dress, often added to an undergraduate’s gown for a degree conferring ceremony.  In fashion, the stole was a garment in the style of a scarf or muffler and was there always for visual effect and sometimes warmth.  Fur stoles were especially popular until wearing it became socially proscribed and (trigger warning) there were fox stoles which included the beast's entire pelt including the head and the much admired brush (tail).