Grotesque

I learned something I thought was pretty interesting today. At work I had been working on my essay for most of the morning and so over lunch I decided to take a break and read one of my guidebooks for Rome. In a description of Nero's Golden House it mentioned that when the buried structure was rediscovered during the renaissance the rooms were called grottoes) which means a small cave or hollow and the style of decoration found there was revived and called grotesque ... as in like the grotto.

This is the type of thing grotesque originally described:

And this is the type of thing now considered grotesque

Kind of a big difference, huh? It fascinates me how the meaning of a word can change.