Google "awesome" and you’ll find it used to describe e-greeting cards, music videos, online arcade games, Powerpoint backgrounds, photos of some man’s cat with various objects piled on it, a children’s website featuring Maurice the Mountain Goat, tuxedos, some guy’s seminars about Middle Eastern politics, wooden fish bait, tree snakes, and a New Zealand Fishing Charter company.

Thousands of websites use the word in their titles. Over 15,000 items for sale on eBay use it in their descriptions, including (last time I checked) electric guitar boxer shorts, a bunch of G.I. Joe comic books, a Buckminster Fuller stamp, an American Idol key chain, and some cheese. And I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation with anyone under 25 30 who failed to use the word at least once. It’s the Swiss Army knife of an entire generation’s vocabulary.

But none of the above – not even Maurice – can truly be called awesome. To deserve that word something shouldn’t simply inspire admiration, adulation, or astonishment. It has to evoke awe , a primal emotional mix of reverence, wonder, and dread . Fear is the key, the thing that separates it from all of the other tepid responses we have to stuff we see every day. If something doesn’t scare you a little, maybe even a lot, it’s not awesome. The photo of the Grand Canyon you use as your desktop wallpaper at work may be quite stunning, but that’s as far as it goes. I doubt you gasp in a small paroxism of fear everytime you turn on your computer. But if you were to visit the real Grand Canyon, step up right to the edge (although I doubt the worry warts in the National Park Service would allow it) and peer down into its depths…well, there you go. Awesome.

That fear component makes the word special and distinguishes it from more mundane adjectives. And once upon a time we needed a word like that. There were still things that delighted and frightened us. God, for instance, used to be awesome, but he doesn’t seem to inspire fear much anymore, so I suppose he should be downgraded to just fabulous. Lots of things found in Nature used to be considered awesome. Science has pretty much ruined that, except for the occasional tornado or earthquake.

In it’s original sense the word was often used to describe things so overwhelming they were beyond human judgement. But now the word has become nothing more than a synonym for excellent . As an example, I’ve substituted excellent for awesome in the following Biblical passage (Job 37):

"…Stand still and consider the wondrous works of God…men cannot look at the light when it is bright in the skies, When the wind has passed and cleared them…He comes from the north as golden splendor; with God is excellent majesty…"

I guess that’s what we’ve come to – King James replaced by Bill and Ted.

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