Search results
- Fulsome dates to the 1200s, when its components (ful + som) gave it the meaning "abundant, full," says the Online Etymology Dictionary. By the mid-1300s, it had come to mean "plump, well-fed." It morphed again in the 1600s to mean "overgrown, overfed" and "offensive to taste or good manners," a meaning it retains today.
www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/the-story-behind-fulsome/
The earliest known use of the word fulsome is in the Middle English period (1150—1500). OED's earliest evidence for fulsome is from before 1325, in Genesis & Exodus.
The adjective fulsome can be defined as "unpleasantly and excessively suave or ingratiating in manner or speech." Historically, it has also meant "disgusting or offensive," or "copious or abundant." Fulsome dates to the 1200s, when its components (ful + som) gave it the meaning "abundant, full," says the Online Etymology Dictionary. By the mid ...
USAGE In the 13th century when it was first used, fulsome meant simply “abundant or copious.” It later developed additional senses of “offensive, gross” and “disgusting, sickening,” probably by association with foul, and still later a sense of excessiveness: a fulsome disease; a fulsome meal, replete with too much of everything.
Fulsome seems like an emphatic way of saying “full” or “complete,” and indeed in its oldest use, which dates as far back as the 1300s, it meant "very full and abundant; copious.” It then came to be used to mean “plump, shapely,” and, more figuratively, “full and well developed in sound,” as in “the singer’s fulsome voice.”
Dec 11, 1977 · The original meaning of the word (from full plus some ) is "abundant, plentiful" (1250). That meaning lasted three centuries; the last citation in the OED is 1583.
Within the first 20 results on search for fulsome on the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), we get three uses of the "excessively flattering" meaning, two uses of the "offensive" meaning, and 12 uses of the "abundant" meaning.
People also ask
When was fulsome a word?
What is the meaning of the word 'fulsome'?
Is fulsome a negative etymology?
Is fullsome a word?
Is fullsome a etymological root?
Why is fulsome a Troublesome Word?
Via the sense of "causing nausea" it came to be used of language, "offensive to taste or good manners" (early 15c.); especially "excessively flattering" (1660s). Since the 1960s, however, it commonly has been used in its original, favorable sense, especially in fulsome praise .
