At one time, people were using the word awesome as an adjective to describe something they totally liked and considered very cool, but now awesome has been mostly replaced by amazing.

“Amazing dinner!”

It’s amazing how long the word amazing has been so overused. Unlike such expressions as far-out and groovy, amazing is holding its own.

It’s everywhere on the Internet: amazing young Russian skater Kamila Valieva, the amazing artistic Olympic gymnast Simone Biles, amazing offers.

These days, amazing basically means excellent, but sometimes it carries the connotation of surprise or unexpectedness as well, as in “the response to our fundraiser was amazing.”

If you count how many times you hear this word during a normal day, you will be amazed. Maybe not ridiculously amazed, but amazed nonetheless.

Awesome, amazing, incredible and unbelievable are now used pretty much interchangeably, as in “The chocolate pudding cake is unbelievable” (substitute incredible, awesome or amazing), but amazing is edging out the other four. I suppose that a person who is able to use all five words in conversation can boast a greater command of the language, revealing the speaker to be a more well-rounded person than someone who simply describes everything as amazing all of the time, which to me seems kind of lazy.

Then too, there’s the fact that usually when a person says that something is amazing, he or she is exaggerating. I prefer precision and understatement, as practiced by my nephew, Henry, who, when he was 9 years old, if asked for his opinion, would politely tell you that a thing was “good–but not very good.”

The word incredible has a meaning other than amazing, coming as it does from the Latin credere, to believe. Credo means “I believe.” If you are credulous, you may be gullible.

If, on the other hand, you are incredulous, you are unwilling or unable to believe something. If a statement is incredible, it is unbelievable.

As my friend Biff would say–and often does–Are you calling me a liar?

Not in so many words, Biff.

I wonder: Why the stigma against the thesaurus? Teachers have told me that they deny their students access to the thesaurus, as if it were a dangerous source of synonyms, although the same teachers encourage, even mandate, use of the dictionary. Some say that the thesaurus encourages plagiarism, but how? I maintain that the thesaurus, like anything else, can be a useful tool as long as it’s handled properly. Thesauri don’t commit plagiarism, people commit plagiarism. It doesn’t hurt someone to have a few synonyms up his sleeve.

I like looking up words in my two-volume “Oxford English Dictionary.” The print is so tiny it is like reading a dollhouse newspaper, which I could do, right up until my cataract surgery, because I was so incredibly nearsighted. I took a certain pride in this. According to the OED, to be amazed carries the sense of being lost in a maze, bewildered, baffled, confused, stunned or stupefied as by a blow on the head, infatuated, crazed, out of one’s wits, seized by sudden panic.

It amazes me when I notice how many times during the day I myself use the word amazing in its bland contemporary sense. I am trying to quit, and to say astonishing instead.

Astonishing and astounding are both in my “Oxford American Thesaurus,” and, according to the OED, they come from the same root word from old English, to stony–to stupify with a shock to the mind or feelings, numb or paralyze as from a great blow, confuse or amaze, whether from mental, emotional or physical shock or loud noise.

When Van Morrison sings “And it stoned me,” stunned by the beauty of the water, he is using the old sense of the word.

To be stoned on marijuana is to be confused, stupefied, bewildered.

The French word etonner, to astonish, is related to tonnerre, French for thunder, the English stun, from stony, and thunderstruck. Who knew these words had so much baggage?

I’m tired of amazing, and I’m finding that astonishing just doesn’t flow easily. I love bewilder, but it’s hard to make it work: “Oh, wow, that’s bewildering!” What about discombobulating? I like it, but it’s one of those words you can use only so many times. I’m about ready to go back to awesome. Awesome is good, but not very good.

Have a ridiculously amazing week.

(Martha Allen lives in Keene Valley. She has been writing for the News for more than 20 years.)