The Loss of Classical Meanings

I've always wondered what it would feel like to be able to observe meanings in vocabulary change right in front of my own eyes. For example, we have the word "gay" which used to mean "happy" to now meaning multiple things other than the "classical" meaning. "That's so gay!" or "He must be gay" (although not polically correct) I understand it differently than what people in the 50's used to use them. Or going back even further, the word "charity" had a meaning of an unconditional type of love, yet to us it is primarily used as in giving something to the poor, or needy.

Now I'm somewhat sad of experiencing this loss of a classical meaning. One word that I just realized that had lost its meaning is the word "Epic." I was reading online at a forum and the subject was "What's your favorite epic movie?" I click it and found it confusing when people were describing single moments in movies, as I was expecting EPIC to mean moviee with a scope and story that goes beyond the tiny story. Epic to me would mean Homer's Odyssey, Star Wars 1 through 6, The Lord of the Rings, Gladiator, etc.

So when I went to Urbandictionary.com and realized that the current meaning of EPIC has been washed down to mean any situation that has "moments of awesomeness". So according to the current EPIC understanding, a crazy car chase could be EPIC. A nice action sequence such as Jackie Chan fighting Jet Li in The Forbidden Kingdom could be EPIC (although it gave me much pleasure to finally see those two have an excellent fight sequence together).

I felt sad with the realization that EPIC has gone from something HUGE and BIG to something... AWESOME. Yeah, the word EPIC had just gone through a change right in front of me... my understanding of the word has gone through an... EPIC FAIL!