Amelioration and Verbicide
"Sometimes amelioration involves weakening of an originally strongly negative meaning: so, annoy is from Late Latin inodiare ' to make loathsome,' in turn from the Latin phrase mihi in odio est 'it is hateful to me' . . .. Likewise, terribly and awfully have weakened to become alternatives for very. [Geoffrey] Hughes (1988) associates this type of amelioration with the popular press, and labels it 'verbicide,' citing tragedy which can now, in journalistic usage, be applied to an earthquake killing thousands or to a missed goal in football."
(April M. S. McMahon, Understanding Language Change. Cambridge University Press, 1999)