Christmas Greetings from a previous century. Ali Bacon reflects on how words change
Fraught can be a good thing! Once again a friend whose interest in early photography merges into all kinds of printed ephemera has sent me a very charming Christmas card, which I guess is Victorian or possibly Edwardian and reads May your Christmas be fraught with every pleasure. But popping it on the mantle piece I had to read it twice because of course it sounds a little odd to our ears. Feeling fraught around Christmas is hardly unusual but that's not usually the source of pleasure. So off I went to do some googling of definitions. Oxford Living Dictionaries: "fraught with (of a situation or course of action) filled with or likely to result in (something undesirable)" Yes, as I thought, but I guess there must at one time have been a usage without the negative connotations and Merriam-Webster provides the information that 'filled with' is the key concept. Originally 'fraught' meant simply laden, as in a sh...