Rhody Universe: Beijing

North Kingstown swimmer Elizabeth Beisel did her best to promote her native state during interviews, peppering quotes about her Olympic experience with a liberal seasoning of “awesome.” In a Projo Sports Blog interview, she says: “Coming from Rhode Island, which is definitely not known as a swimming state, and to represent them [Rhode Islanders] in Beijing is awesome. Just to be from Rhode Island is awesome…” Well, yes it is, although it’s strange that an Ocean State would not be a swimming state. Earliest forms of the word “awesome,” described by some linguists as the official adjective of Rhode Island, go back to the 1500s, when it meant “inspiring awe” and “dreadful.” The Oxford English Dictionary traces its etymological transformation as the slang expression equivalent to a Michael Phelps swim or Usain Bolt sprint to a phenomenon that occurred in the 1980s. Far be it for the sun-deprived scribes at lowly Blog on the Half Shell to question the OED, but some of us were tossing “awesomes” around in the playgrounds, classrooms and school buses of Barrington throughout the 1970s, well before the decade of synthesizers and mullets. And you know that if Beisel had somehow managed to medal in Beijing, we would have heard her describe the Games as "wicked awesome," otherwise known as the official highest praise of Rhode Island.