If you come across the word egregious this week, it is likely in a story about the New York governor’s exemplary leadership during the pandemic in which he scuttled seniors by sending the coronavirus into their nursing homes while reportedly making the medical officials in charge of them immune to liability charges. He has reportedly threatened state congressmen of his own party in order to silence their calls for accountability. By all accounts, this is excellent gubernatorial work.

But you see the irony I’m using here. I’ve said egregious as if it means excellent, because that’s exactly the usage the word once had. Egregious comes from Latin, originally meaning “distinguished or extraordinary.” The Online Etymology Dictionary says it came into English in the 1530s.

An old educational journal gives some examples of its use in this meaning. From Samuel Johnson’s The Life of Pope: “This Essay affords an egregious instance of the predominance of genius, the dazzling splendour of imagery, and the seductive powers of eloquence.” Here Johnson is saying Pope has outdone himself in this essay on man. “The reader feels his mind full, though he learns nothing; and when he meets it in its new array no longer knows the talk of his mother and his nurse.”

In a poem for a newborn prince in 1705:

One, to Empire Born,
Egregious Prince, whose Manly Childhood shew’d
His mingled Parents, and portended Joy
Unspeakable;

Johnson’s use leans into the extraordinary side of the original meaning of egregious, not so much the excellent side. Perhaps it shows the path for the change of meaning, which the dictionary has occurring in the late 16th century.

First, we used it ironically: Should’ve seen the street preacher I just passed, an egregious communicator that, preaching the gospel of sausages in buns.

Then, we pushed the meaning into outrageous or extremely bad, like only a governor can do.

Isn’t it interesting that words can flip meaning like this?