Origins
The word 'awful' is a compound that means exactly what it appears to mean: 'full of awe.' It was formed in Middle English by combining 'awe' — profound reverence mixed with wonder and dread — with the suffix '-ful.' In its original sense, 'awful' described anything that inspired the deepest reverence: the presence of God, the majesty of a king, the vastness of the sea, the terror of divine judgment.
'Awe' itself comes from Old Norse 'agi,' meaning 'terror' or 'dread,' from Proto-Germanic '*agiz.' The word carried both fear and reverence — the feeling one has before something immensely powerful and beyond human control. In Old English, 'ege' (from the same root) meant 'fear' or 'awe,' and the two emotions were not distinguished as sharply as they are today. To be in awe was to be simultaneously afraid and reverent.
For several centuries, 'awful' was a word of the highest seriousness. An 'awful silence' was one charged with sacred dread. An 'awful presence' was one commanding the deepest respect. The 'awful majesty of God' was a standard phrase in religious writing through the seventeenth century. To call something 'awful' was to place it in the category of the sublime — beyond ordinary human experience, touching the transcendent.
Development
The turning point came in the eighteenth century, when 'awful' began to be used as a mere intensifier — meaning 'extreme' or 'very great' — without necessarily implying reverence. An 'awful lot of trouble' no longer suggested divine dread; it simply meant a great deal of trouble. This weakening of meaning, called semantic bleaching, drained the word of its reverential force.
From 'extremely' to 'extremely bad' was a short step. By the early nineteenth century, 'awful' was being used colloquially to mean 'very bad' or 'dreadful,' and this sense rapidly overtook the original. By the mid-nineteenth century, the transformation was essentially complete in everyday speech. The word that once described the presence of God now described a bad meal or unpleasant weather.
The adverb 'awfully' followed the same path, becoming a casual intensifier: 'awfully nice,' 'awfully sorry,' 'awfully kind.' The irony is stark — 'awfully nice' literally means 'inspiringly-of-divine-dread nice,' a combination that would have baffled a medieval speaker.
Later History
Meanwhile, the English language needed a replacement for the original meaning of 'awful,' and it found one in 'awesome.' Built from the same root ('awe' plus '-some'), 'awesome' took over the reverential sense that 'awful' had abandoned. In the twentieth century, 'awesome' itself underwent casual weakening — especially in American English, where it became a general term of approval — but it retains a stronger connection to wonder and admiration than 'awful' does.
The paired fate of 'awful' and 'awesome' is one of the most instructive stories in English etymology. Two words built from the same root, using parallel suffixes, arrived at opposite meanings. 'Awful' collapsed from the sublime to the terrible; 'awesome' was elevated or at least held steady. Together they demonstrate that suffixes do not fix meaning — usage does, and usage is driven by the collective habits of millions of speakers making small, unconscious choices over centuries.
The original sense of 'awful' survives in only the most formal or archaic contexts. A poet might still write of 'the awful silence of the mountains,' and a reader would understand the word in its old sense — but only because the context demands it. In everyday speech, 'awful' means 'bad,' and the awe has gone out of it entirely.