“Sit down and tell me about it,” said Mrs. Verma.
 “Well, Ma’am,” said Rahul eagerly, “as I was leafing through an ancient volume that has been in my family for ages, I came across this sentence. ‘The daft maiden was greatly loved.’ That’s odd, don’t you think? A daft girl may be scorned or pitied, but how could she be liked, let alone loved?”
  “She could, if you take ‘daft’ to be ‘gentle’ which is what it meant long before the word came to be used in its present sense of ‘stupid’,” explained Mrs. Verma.
 “Isn’t it amazing that the word has changed so completely over the years?”
   “Not so extraordinary if you consider that in our competitive times, when meekness tends to be mistaken for weakness, gentleness could well be regarded as folly. Incidentally, someone described as ‘silly’ in old English might have been simple, happy, even blessed, but not necessarily unintelligent.”
 “I’m learning a lot, Ma’am,” said Rahul, “and all because I was casually flipping through a book.”
  “You’ll be interested to know that in the 14th century, ‘casually’ was close to our modern ‘casualty’. One would have talked then of a house being destroyed casually---that is, by accident. Nor could heightened ‘security’ have helped prevent such a disaster, for ‘secure’ meant ‘careless’.”
  “Please may I share my wealth of newfound knowledge with my friends?” said Rahul, as the bell rang.
  “I shall ban your plan,” said Mrs. Verma firmly. Laughing at Rahul’s look of surprise, she added,  “I’m using ‘ban’ in its old-fashioned sense of ‘proclaim’!”

      Match the words in Column A correctly with their former meanings in Column B

      Column A                                     Column B

      1. Slogan                                      a) Small brush

      2. Cork                                         b) Battle cry

      3. Pencil                                       c) Person

      4. Parson                                     d) Sandal

 Answers: 1b  2d  3a  4c