just-shower-thoughts:

“Terrific” is the defiant child of “terrible” and “horrific”, who refuses to follow in family tradition.

This reminds me of an incident in school. We had just moved from Germany to the U.S. and it was the first parent teacher night. The principal said to my mom: “You have a terrific son” and she looked at me and asked me frowning “what did you do?” The principal burst out laughing and explained the meaning of “terrific”. It’s definitely a word whose meaning is non-obvious to non-native speakers 😀