Speaking of words that changed: sublime used to mean this. Something powerful and dangerous that inspired terror and a sort of admiration was said to be sublime

Speaking of words that changed: sublime used to mean this. Something powerful and dangerous that inspired terror and a sort of admiration was said to be sublime. Here's Edmund Burke writing in 1757: ‘Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.’