Egregious

[sanetraitor]

Egregious is an egregious word in that it means two completely opposite things at the same time.

egregious
adjective
1 outstandingly bad; shocking.
2 archaic remarkably good.

Comments

[baochan]

It probably originally meant something like "extreme". In Japanese there's a similar word, taihen (大変). It usually translates to "Awful, terrible", but in common usage it sometimes means a good thing. I still don't quite know how to use it properly.

Though when I was in Japan, my understanding of the language was very basic, but I was walking around Tokyo and saw someone cleaning out their house, and there was a pile of trash nearly 1 story tall in their front yard. They said "hello", and something about "garbage". I said, 大変ですね。 I was really proud of that. I think it was the most perfect use of the phrase.