Consider terror, terrible and terrify! The second word now generally means something like a rubbish or bad state and the third means to induce a state of the f

Consider terror, terrible and terrify! The second word now generally means something like a rubbish or bad state and the third means to induce a state of the first word (bowel quaking, etc etc). The word dreadful (almost certainly also a warship name) has not suffered quite such an ignominious decline but "I'm dreadfully sorry" is quite often seen in the wild.