For as long as they’d been English, incredible, unbelievable, unreal, fabulous, and fantastic were either derogatory or neutrally descriptive, different ways of calling claims unlikely, imaginary, or untrue. But then they were all redefined to be terms of supreme praise, synonyms for wonderful, glorious, outstanding, superb. It was a curious linguistic cleansing and a convenient prelude to the full unfettering of balderdash, bunkum, hooey, humbug, and malarkey later in the century.
