Q: “Depraved,” which used to imply evil just a few a long time in the past, now additionally appears to imply cool, mischievous, or so dangerous it’s good. How did it get these polar reverse connotations?

A: This phenomenon you’re noticing is an instance of the loss or discount of that means in a phrase, however the weakening of “depraved” isn’t a current phenomenon—it dates again to Shakespeare.

When “depraved” appeared within the twelfth century, the Oxford English Dictionary says, it referred to folks “dangerous in ethical character, disposition, or conduct; inclined or hooked on wilful wrongdoing; practising or disposed to practise evil; morally wicked.”

As if that’s not robust sufficient, the OED provides that “depraved” in its authentic sense is a “time period of extensive software, however at all times of robust reprobation, implying a excessive diploma of evil high quality.”

The dictionary’s earliest quotation, which we’ve expanded, is from Layamon’s Brut, a chronicle of Britain written in Center English someday earlier than 1200. On this passage, Rowena is about to poison her stepson, King Vortimer:

Herne ou ȝeo tock an; þes wickede wifman.
In rent bosome ȝeo bar bi-neoþe rent tyttes.
one ampulle; of hatter ifulled.

(Harken, take heed of this depraved girl.
In her bosom, she carried beneath her tits
an ampoule full of poison.)

Within the late sixteenth century, the OED says, the adjective took on a “weakened or lighter sense” that was “often roughly jocular” and may imply “malicious; mischievous, sly.”

The dictionary’s earliest quotation for the weakened sense is from Shakespeare’s As You Like It, believed to have been carried out in 1599 however not printed till the First Folio of 1623. On this expanded passage, Rosalind describes Cupid as depraved:

“No, that very same depraved Bastard of Venus, that was begot of thought, conceiu’d of spleene, and borne of madnesse, that blinde rascally boy, that abuses euery ones eyes, as a result of his owne are out, let him bee iudge, how deepe I’m in loue.”

Within the early twentieth century, the OED says, “depraved” took on the sense of  “glorious, splendid; exceptional.” This expanded quotation is from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1920 novel This Sde of Paradise:

“ ‘Inform ’em to play “Admiration”!’ shouted Sloane. ‘You two order; Phoebe  and I are going to shake a depraved calf.’ ”

As we famous in a  2021 put up, it’s not unusual for the sense of a utilization to weaken over time, a growth that linguists would possibly consult with as “semantic weakening,” “semantic bleaching,” “semantic loss,” or “semantic discount.”

As for the phrase’s earlier etymology, the OED says “depraved” is outwardly an expanded type of the now-obsolete adjective “wick,” which was apparently an adjectival use of the Outdated English noun wicca (wizard), the masculine model of wicce (witch).

We’ll finish with a number of depraved phrases from the Second Witch in Shakespeare’s Macbeth:

By the pricking of my Thumbes,
One thing depraved this manner comes:
Open Lockes, who euer knockes.

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