Around the year 1300, “nice” was first used in English to mean “stupid”. Two hundred years later,“nice” began to carry a good meaning. If people said a book was written “nicely”, they meant the bookwas written “clearly” or “carefully”, not “stupidly”. After 1800, “nice” began to take its modernmeanings like “kind” or “friendly”. Now, people think of “nice” as a word with good meanings.        A change from bad to good of a word’s meaning like “nice” is called AMELIORATION. For moreexamples of AMELIORATION, check next page.
【題組】5. Which of the following sentence can we see on the next page?
(A) The word “silly” meant “happy”, but now it means “stupid”.
(B) The word “terrific” meant “terrible”, but now it means “great”.
(C) The word “girl” meant “a young person”, but now it means “a young woman”
(D) The word telephone is cut short to “phone”, but now the two mean the same thing.