What "Fantastic" Really Means

There is a great silver-screen film noir movie from 1950 called D.O.A. that I once had the pleasure to watch. It was a bit silly, but had some memorable parts. The most memorable feature that it had was a single word that the main character was fond of saying: fantastic.
The plot is fairly straightforward: A man is poisoned (with "luminous poison" - how unfortunate) and must find out who poisoned him. So what does the man think of all this?
"Sir, you have been poisoned with luminous poison. You have only three days to live."
"What?! That's...fantastic!!!"
Wait, what? Why would that be fantastic?

fan·tas·tic/fanˈtastik/

Adjective:	Imaginative or fanciful; remote from reality. Of extraordinary size or degree.
Synonyms:	fantastical - fanciful - fancy - bizarre

Contrary to common usage, "fantastic" is not just an emphatic word for "great". So the luminous poison-ee was perfectly justified in saying that his situation was "fantastic" (I mean, luminous poison, really?)
And then there's "terrific". Why is it that when people say "terrific", 99% of the time it carries a positive connotation?
"I got a new car!"
"That's terrific!"
But, if you look at the actual word, you realize where it comes from: Terror. Terrible. Terrific.
Funny that the definition

ter·rif·ic/təˈrifik/

Adjective:	Of great size, amount, or intensity: "there was a terrific bang". Extremely good; excellent: "you look terrific".
Synonyms:	terrible - tremendous - dreadful - frightful - horrible

and the synonyms seem to point to two different meanings, one primarily positive, one primarily negative.
Looking at it etymologically, saying that someone getting a new car is "terrific" seems a bit...odd (Unless said person is a teenager - then "terrific" may be the optimal adjective). So, while it's still technically correct to use "terrific" in this way, once you think about it, you'll never use it without thinking about it that way again.
This seems to be a fairly common phenomenon. I found a poem by Terry Pratchett that includes several more examples:

 

“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvelous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamor.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.”

 

Ever heard of Puck?

 All this reminded me of an essay by George Orwell that deals with meaning changes in common words, "Politics and the English Language"

He also discusses the overuse and subsequent distortion of metaphors:

"Dying metaphors. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically "dead" (e.g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles' heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a "rift," for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase."

I know that I've definitely seen things like "tow the line." Being in the "throws" (throes) of something is my personal favorite. "Whoa is me!" is also a goodie. Whoa, indeed. While not quite metaphors, I feel that these examples are on the same level of language distortion.

So let's make it a challenge: Use these words correctly or with their original meaning in mind. You may get some funny looks, but since "the English language is in a bad way," perhaps it is about time to change.