「egregious（ひどい）」はもともとほめ言葉。“群れから抜きん出るほど立派”が逆転した

Today, the word "egregious" describes something very bad. An egregious mistake is a terrible mistake. But long ago, it was a word of praise. It comes from Latin. "E" means "out," and "grex" means "a group of animals, like sheep."

So the word first meant "standing out from the group," or "very good." People probably started to use it the opposite way, as a joke. Over time, the meaning changed to "very bad."

If your teacher calls your answer "an egregious error," you should not feel proud. The word means "shockingly bad." Its history, though, points the other way.

The Latin word "egregius" was made from "e," meaning "out," and "grex," meaning "flock." Something egregious stood out from the flock, so it was excellent. English borrowed the word in the 1500s with this good meaning.

The Oxford Learner's Dictionary says the bad meaning probably came from people using the word ironically. They called bad things "excellent" as a joke. The same "grex" appears in "gregarious," which describes someone who enjoys being with other people, and in "congregate," which means to come together in a group.

In formal English, "egregious" is a heavy word. It is kept for mistakes and wrongs that are hard to forgive, as in "an egregious error" or "egregious behavior." In the 1500s, though, the same word was a compliment. Its Latin source, "egregius," combined "e," meaning "out," with "grex," a flock or herd, so it described someone who stood out from the crowd for good reasons.

The Oxford English Dictionary's earliest English example comes from around 1550, and the Oxford Learner's Dictionary says it was first used as praise. How it turned around is less clear. The learner's dictionary points to irony: people called something "egregious" when they meant the opposite, and the mocking sense took over. That is a sensible story, but the dictionary itself says "probably."

In Othello, Shakespeare's villain Iago plans to make the hero "egregiously an ass," with the word sitting right next to an insult. Some dictionaries still list "distinguished" as an old-fashioned meaning, so in a very old text the word may be praise. How often people use it has changed too. By the OED's estimates, it fell to about a fifth of its 1750 level by 1950 and then more than doubled by 2010.