4

The Word Is Adopted by a Specific Group

Gay used to mean happy and carefree, and it still kind of does according to the dictionary, but you're going to get some strange looks if you use it that way now.

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"My vacation? It was so gay, thanks for asking. The cruise was gay, and the meals were gay, and the sunsets were gay.
And all of the entertainers on board the ship were gay too."

Of course, gay took on a new meaning in the 20th century, when it appears to have been self-selected by homosexual men to describe themselves. This change would later inspire another new meaning, using the rule previously discussed, where the low opinion various bigots had of homosexuals meant that gay would take on a hilarious new meaning of "lame" or "undesirable."

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"No, I was being bigoted ironically, so it's cool. We're all cool here."

How It Will Change in the Future

Gay will eventually take on positive connotations again, when it's adopted by a group that's widely loved: yourself. By 2044, when the Socialist People's Union of North America declares that everyone must become homosexual to boost the nation's bathhouse industry, gay will take on a completely positive vibe, before eventually normalizing into a noun/adjective that doesn't mean much more than "person" or, perhaps, "comrade."

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"What do you have planned for today, gay?"
"Standing in line for bread and leather vests."
"That's gay."

3

An Acronym Overlaps the Word

Ram is a pretty straightforward word meaning "a male sheep" or "to impact forcefully," and is probably most commonly used to describe various advanced driving techniques (using either definition).

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"And I think if you'll check that sheep's corpse closely, officer, you'll see that in fact I 'rammed a ram,'
meaning this was legally wordplay and not a ticketable offense."

But in the last couple decades a new meaning has appeared alongside those. RAM, short for random access memory, is the name for, I think, a type of robot that runs around in our computers doing stuff. Although this is technically an acronym, it's never pronounced as an acronym, and as we've seen in cases like scuba or laser, it's well on its way to becoming a full word itself.

How It Will Change in the Future

But there's nothing to stop RAM from becoming a new acronym, and when super butch terrorists instigate a nuclear conflict during the Hetero Insurgency of 2087, the term RAM will take on a new meaning as the human survivors who roam the empty highways learn to fear the Redundant Ass Mutants (mutated humans with a second, non-functional ass) that plague their every step.

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"And then the rams overtook us. Poor Reginald."
"He wasn't?"
"He was double-sat-on, yes."
-much weeping and lamenting-

2

The Word Is Continuously Used Incorrectly

Fantastic has a couple definitions, but the one currently most widely used is as an adjective meaning "awesome" or "incredible." I mainly use it for describing burritos. But its original definition is "imaginary" or "incredibly fanciful" or something like that, which I guess is how our founding fathers had to describe burritos.

Wikimedia Commons
"... and all in a flat, circular bread, folded just so."
"A truly fantastic vision, John."

1

The Word Is Preferentially Used to Describes a Specific Subset of Things

Awful is pretty straightforward, meaning something like "really, really bad." But you can see from its spelling that the words awe and full are lurking in there, and indeed, awful used to mean "inspiring awe." But that was back in olden, filth-encrusted times, when awe meant not just "a reverential feeling" but "a reverential feeling of terror." (All those uses of awe in the Bible were meant to be scary, not inspiring, because it turns out that God is a lot more useful as a motivational aid when he's angry.)

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"STOP LOVING ME. THAT WAS MY SON'S DEAL, NOT MINE. FEAR. I THIRST FOR YOUR FEAR."

The switch to the current "very bad" meaning occurred sometime around the start of the 19th century, and you can sort of guess how: awful was used to describe things that were reverential and terrifying, then just terrifying, then just things that were pretty bad.

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"The mountain of God's poop we're about to shovel is awful."
"Correct in many ways."

This new meaning became more and more popular, I guess because the world just kept getting shittier, and the old meaning slipped away, leaving us with yet another word to describe something that was pretty shitty.

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"Can never have enough."

How It Will Change in the Future

Awful will eventually retake some of its positive connotations in the late 22nd century when humanity has capitulated entirely to our former servants, the sentient fanning machines. Our cries of terror about these awful monstrosities will be misunderstood by said monstrosities, and they'll begin using it in a positive manner, say when complimenting a fellow machine's "awful flesh-combustion engine." The few humans who survive, kept in captivity so that their precious lubricating blood can be harvested, will be forced to use the word in the same way as their masters.

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"And you're done. Have an awful day."
"Thank you so much!"

Chris Bucholz is a Cracked columnist and your best friend. His first novel, Severance, is incredible, coming out on Dec. 9, and available for preorder on Amazon or Apex Books. Join him on Facebook or Twitter.

For more from Bucholz, check out 4 Offensive Words That Started Out as the Polite Alternative and 4 Weird Side Effects of Learning How to Write.