gross

A medieval merchant could use gross for something physically thick, while a moralist could use it for a person whose manners were equally rough. The word traveled from Late Latin grossus into Old French gros and then Middle English gros, carrying the basic image of bulk along with it. English then split the bundle: “gross” became “total” when something was counted as one undivided mass, while “gross” meaning coarse grew into “vulgar,” “offensive,” and eventually “disgusting.” That modern sense appears in U.S. student slang by 1958—a surprisingly recent arrival for a word with medieval luggage. Its deepest origin is uncertain: some scholars have connected it with Proto-Celtic *brassos, “great” or “violent,” while other sources leave the Late Latin word unexplained. So when someone says a movie grossed millions, the word remembers a whole undivided heap; when they call the movie gross, they are still pointing at something unpleasantly overfull.