_Pen_ meant a feather,
then a quill to write with, then an instrument for writing used in the
same way as a quill. A _groom_ meant a man, then a stableman (in
_bridegroom_, however, it preserves the old signification).
_Heathen_ (heath-dweller), _pagan_ (peasant), and _demon_
(a divinity) had in themselves no iniquitous savor until early Christians
formed their opinion of the people inaccessible to them and the spirits
incompatible with the unity of the Godhead. Words betokening future
happenings or involving judgment tend to take a special cast from the
fears and anxieties men feel when their fortune is affected or their
destiny controlled by external forces. Thus _omen_ (a prophetic
utterance or sign) and _portent_ (a stretching forward, a foreseeing,
a foretelling) might originally be either benign or baleful; but nowadays,
especially in the adjectival forms _ominous_ and _portentous_,
they wear a menacing hue. Similarly _criticism_, _censure_, and
_doom_, all of them signifying at first mere judgment, have come--the
first in popular, the other two in universal, usage--to stand for adverse
judgment. The old sense of _doom_ is perpetuated, however, in
_Doomsday_, which means the day on which we are all to be, not
necessarily sent to hell, but judged.
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