excited = enthusiastic; not in OED, AHD

[Joel S. Berson]

At 2/5/2010 06:24 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>A change seems to have happened during WWII. In 1940 "excited" is mostly
>a negative term. By 1945 it is often a positive one.

"Enthusiastic" also changed, I think, from
negative to positive -- but probably in the late
18th century, a sufficient number of years after
the Great Revival, Wesley, Whitefield, et al.

Joel


>DanG
>
>On 2/5/2010 6:20 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
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>>Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>Poster:       Wilson Gray<hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>>Subject:      Re: excited = enthusiastic; not in OED, AHD
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>Yep. To me, three.
>>
>>-Wilson
>>
>>
>>
>>On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 4:53 PM, Benjamin
>>Barrett<gogaku at ix.netcom.com>  wrote:
>>
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>>>Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>Poster:       Benjamin Barrett<gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM>
>>>Subject:      excited = enthusiastic; not in OED, AHD
>>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>In the US, "excited" most commonly means
>>>(very) enthusiastic, at least to me.
>>>
>>>The OED and AHD completely fail to explicitly
>>>provide this meaning, referring instead to
>>>strong feeling or emotion. For "excited," the OED says:
>>>
>>>1. a. Stirred by strong emotion, disturbed, agitated.
>>>
>>>My Mac dictionary, however, addresses what to
>>>me is the basic meaning, saying:
>>>
>>>1 very enthusiastic and eager : they were
>>>excited about the prospect | the excited children.
>>>
>>>On the Endangered Languages list, there was an
>>>exchange where someone apparently using Irish
>>>English thought it absurd to be excited about revitalizing languages.
>>>
>>>Benjamin Barrett
>>>Seattle, WA
>>>
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>>
>>
>>--
>>-Wilson
>>­­­
>>All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"­­a strange complaint to
>>come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>>­Mark Twain
>>
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>
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