Thing Not To Be Today: fearful.

 The word fearful has two meanings that are opposites of each other, which makes it a contranym. As if that isn't enough, it also has another meaning not really connected to either of the other two. That makes it very useful.

But whether fearful invokes fear in others (The fearful monster roared, and its hot breath enveloped me...) or describes being full of fear ourselves (...but I stood with my feet planted wide apart so no one could hear the fearful knocking of my knees...) or even whether fearful just means really really annoying (...and I told myself that if I got eaten at least that would cure my fearful fever) then we want to keep away from it.

I mean, we have the heroes of books to go through all that sort of thing for us, don't we.

illustration by The Terror Tales

Thing Not To Be Today: fearful. The Old English form of the word fear was fǣr,which is related to the Old Norse fār, hostility, and the Latin perīculum, danger.