Awesome trivialities

I first came across the word ‘awesome’ when analyzing a poem in my 6^th grade English class. I was instantly drawn to the word as I found the sound of it pleasant and peculiar. Today, I feel that it belongs in the mouths of teenagers more than in old English poetry. In any given conversation, it seems to be slipped into every other sentence.

“Dude, that party was awesome!”, “Your hair looks awesome”, “This hamburger is awesome!”
I dare say that although a hamburger might be good, satisfying, tasty or delicious, it has to be a somewhat extraordinary burger to truly fit the label it is given when we call it ‘awesome’. One definition of awesome is this: extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear. This is hardly what we are trying to express when we use the word in everyday conversation. The overuse of words in itself is something that easily gets on my nerves but in the case of ‘awesome’ I feel that something has been lost with the change in meaning and use for this particular word. For what do we do when something truly is awesome, that is to say when it leaves our jaw hanging open and overthrows us completely; when it leaves us in awe? Of course we can use synonyms to properly explain ourselves, but if this is the direction in which our language is going and we keep discharging words of their meaning by overusing and trivializing them, is our range of possibility to truly express ourselves decreasing?

Seeing the word in poetry now, it stands out to me as being strangely misplaced. In this way, the meaning it has come to have in my everyday life has effectively overruled the original meaning of the word. While I know this is natural, and that it happens to many words it is slightly depressing to know that my opportunities to truly express how I feel has been narrowed down, even if only by a microscopic bit. Although the word is still perfectly valid when used in its original meaning, a sentence like ‘It was an awesome cathedral’ has a strangely casual ring to it, and I am afraid I will never quite be able to appreciate the word in its original meaning again. This bothers me quite a bit and it is definitely not awesome.