Originally Posted by
rosefarts
You're probably right. If I call myself an enthusiast, I feel like I need to gain weight and learn about Ham radios.
And I'm not fast enough to race.
It's kind of a crisis.
Language is a dicey, fluid medium of communication. That which is inferred is not always the same as that which was implied. One person's mental image of "cyclist" is different than another's. The connotations of certain words can eventually change their definitions completely, but I don't think 'cyclist' has reached that point on a societal scale yet (outside of niche slang).
Awesome and Awful technically mean the same thing, yet one is used in a positive way and the other in a negative way.