“Great” used to mean “big” rather than “really good”. Which is why the largest of the islands in the North Atlantic archipelago is called “Great Britain”.
This penny dropped for me when I heard someone from GB/IR use something like “that’s grand!” rather than great. That painted quite a literal picture in my head at the time!
“Great” used to mean “big” rather than “really good”. Which is why the largest of the islands in the North Atlantic archipelago is called “Great Britain”.
“Great-grandmother” is another example where the great=big meaning still shows up…
This penny dropped for me when I heard someone from GB/IR use something like “that’s grand!” rather than great. That painted quite a literal picture in my head at the time!
Did you ever recover the penny?