Tom Hodgkinson‘s skill at completing a simple task is astounding to behold, apparently 

We hear a lot about the mental health problems suffered by young people. But when I encounter them in the form of waiting staff, they seem to be extremely cheerful. Have you noticed how they praise you wonderfully with their hyperbolic vocabulary?

“Erm, can I have the soup to start?”

“Soup? Amazing!”

“And, er, the lamb rack for main course.”

“PAR-FECT!”

When it comes to pudding, they explode with excitement and appreciation.

“And the lemon sorbet please.”

“Incredible! Thanks guys, amazing. Par-fect. You are SO good at ordering food from a menu?”

Which brings me to another beef, which is the over- and misuse of the word “amazing”. It’s used as an expression of approval and a positive appraisal of the quality of a piece of art, or indeed anything. For example, “Gorillaz are amazing!” or “the fish stew is amazing!” as substitutes for “very good” or “excellent”.

It was probably my mother – or maybe teachers at school – who taught me that “amazing”, along with “incredible”, should not be used in this way. They don’t really mean what you want them to mean.

“Amazing” really means “confusing” as in “it has put me into a maze”. It’s used in this sense in Andrew Marvell’s poem, “The Garden”, which expresses a philosophical attitude to ambitious 17th-century strivers:

How vainly men themselves amaze,
To win the palm, the oak or bayes.

The OED says that in its early days “amaze” meant “to stun or stupefy (a person); to daze; to bewilder, perplex”. Thus you could be “amazed” by a blow to the head, as in the following example from a 1530 French grammar book:

You will amase hym with beatyng of hym thus aboute the heed.

Or it could mean to fill a thing with terror, as in this example from Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler:

The sight of any shadow amazes the fish.

Over time “amaze” came to mean “greatly surprise” or “astound”, as in, “I’m amazed that I actually caught a fish.” And that is what it means today. But I cannot find any reference in the OED to “amazing” meaning “excellent”. I wonder how this happened? Can any enlightened scholars of language help me? It would be amazing if you could send in your comments below.

Amazing.

Tom

PS It was very sad to read about the death of David Hockney, but the news also brought back wonderful memories of my 2010 visit to the artist when he was living in Bridlington, East Yorkshire. His definition of success, he says, is to do what you want every day, as he does. It’s not about the money. “If you can live that sort of life, you are rich.” Read the interview here.

SELECTED COMMENTS

These comments were mailed to us after an earlier version of this piece was sent out as a newsletter. We like to publish a selection and reserve the right to edit them for clarity. Please add your thoughts in the box below.

Sir: Yes indeed. But “awesome” is worse!
tunnicliffe

Sir: I think the use of “terrific” is a similar modern alteration? Maybe all these years when Craig Revell Horwood said a dance was “A-MA-ZING” on Strictly he was actually saying how confused he was?
Tom Miller

Sir: Semantic shift, innit? “Disinterested” no  longer meaning “objective”, “decimate” no longer killing one in every 10 (definitely a hyperbolic shift there but mass slaughter) etc. One can try to resist (and I certainly do with “disinterested”), but there’s a danger you risk becoming like the old prof who insisted that “cinema” should be spelled with a “k” as per the Greek origin and insisted on pronouncing it with a hard “c”. It didn’t catch on.
Jonathan Smart, Plymouth

Sir: You must have seen this interview with Noel! One of my favourites. Amazing.
Kristina Wirz

Sir: Amazing. That letter was absolutely awesome.
Bob  Harris

Sir: Just think, if amazing hadn’t come to mean ‘excellent’ we would never have had ‘amazeballs’ and how much our lives would have been impoverished.
Richard Bond

Sir: Fantastic used to mean something not of this world, that was remote from reality. Now it just means that it’s, er, amazing (Ben ducks down to avoid the copy of the Idler that the editor threw at his head).
Ben Hall

Sir: So can you please research the amazing overuse of the word ‘stunning’ with which the English, and the Australians, lavishly describe anything and everything, right down to their morning slice of soggy toast.
Jenni Nelson

Sir: Young people today eh … grumpy old man syndrome.
Jason Palmer

Sir: Ditto ‘iconic’ and ‘almost unique’ and other phrases which are not accurate. And when ordering from a menu, ‘Can I get (whatever)?’ ‘Well, if you care to serve yourself, sir.’ Just idling, but not as idly as these misusers of our rich language.
Ian Potts

Sir: I too am irritated with the vast misuse, cheapening even of Amazing. I was giving my address to a young assistant in Vision Express the other day and after she’d stopped tip tapping it in said, “Amazing”. WTF I thought, it’s an address and had to say, “It’s not actually, it’s really quite dull there”. For myself, amazing would be seeing someone climb a frozen waterfall, the Aurora Borealis first hand or the view of Earth from space. All also probably a misuse.
Richard Fenner

Sir: May I add that other cringe word”awesome”? Great Mag – a bit deep,profound even at times (many). But I read most of it. Hockney-genuine genius.
John Truslove.

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