prodigious

I baulked at the phrase ‘prodigious and advanced students’ because, to my mind, a prodigious student must be huge — very, very tall and possibly obese.  But, as I so often say to others, I must learn that language changes all the time and be accepting of such changes.  Prodigious comes via French from Latin prodigiosus of or relating to a prodigy, that is, something freakish that is an omen or portent.  A tree split by lightning, a calf with five legs.  That kind of thing.

From that it came to mean ‘exceptional in extent, size, quality, etc.’  You can put prodigious effort into something.  You can have a prodigious talent.  But you cannot BE prodigious.

Or so I thought until I consulted the Oxford English Dictionary and found that in the 1960s prodigious came to mean ‘exhibiting the qualities of a prodigy’, a prodigy being established from the early 1800s to mean ‘ a person with exceptional qualities or abilities, especially a precociously talented child’.

Prodigious as an adjective describing a person is a form derived (belatedly) from this sense of prodigy.  So the phrase ‘prodigious and advanced students’ makes perfect sense. There is a hierarchy. First the freakishly talented students and next the ones that are pretty good.

I will have to accept it.