Why does “охуенно” mean “great” but “хуёвый” mean “bad”

Question

I came across some words chatting with my friend (he's a native speaker). What's the difference between пиздато, охуенно, хуёво and пиздец? The first two words have a positive meaning but хуёво and пиздец are negative. Why? They derive from the same words, don't they?

Answer 1

This is somewhat close to question: "Why does in English "awesome" means great but "awful" means something horrible?". The short answer is: the fact that a pair of words is derived from common root does not mean that these words do not have opposite meaning. Moreover, the same word in different context can stand for completely different concepts.

For example, in English word "terrible" in colloquial speech can be interpreted as "formidably great", compare to "ужасно круто" / "ты ужасно красива". Recall English usage of "fucking", it is used to indicate an extreme degree of something either positive, or negative.

As for the question why exactly some forms acquire positive connotation ("охуенный", "пиздатый") and some negative ("хуёвый", "пиздецовый"), we can only explore when exactly it becomes common, but not why, I guess. As far as you are asking about why but not about when, I do consider this question answered.

To put it simple, it's not something specific to Russian and just because :)

Answer 2

Just like in English you can add "fucking" to both "great" and "horrible", in Russian you can use the root хуй to express both positive and negative emotions. The body parts that хуй and пизда refer to are not "bad" or "good", they are just taboo to talk about — that's why, if you do refer to them, your speech becomes more expressive, more extreme; but not necessarily positive or negative.

As for the difference between these words, you got it right that пиздато is positive and хуёво is negative. Пиздец and охуенно, however, can also mean "extremely", or, in case with пиздец, "an extreme situation."

Consider:

Он пиздец умный! ("He's so fucking clever")

Он охуенно тупой! ("He's so fucking dumb")

Это пиздец как круто! ("It's fucking awesome")

Answer 3

пиздато literally means something like 'cuntush', and is an expression of positive exprience obtained at heterosexual male's genitalia; you might hardly, if ever, hear heterosexual women saying 'пиздато';

хуево literally meas something like 'dicky', or 'prickish', and therefore is an expression of negative feeling of a heterosexual person equipped with male genitalia towards same sex genitalia; it might also have a slight overtone of self-denial;

охуенно is different; it is all about o-prefix (cf. овладеть/овладевать, ополоуметь, одолеть/одолевать, ошеломить/ошеломлять, огрести/огребать, описать/описывать, остепениться, обрести/обретать, etc.), where the prefix has a meaning of 'taking smb/smth over completely, loosing the sense of self-identity', and охуенно stands therefore for smth like 'having almost a sexual pleasure', 'feeling like turning oneself into a one big hard-on'

Answer 4

"пиздато" means good and "хуёво" meand bad because vagina usually brings positive feelings (i.e. if you fuck somebody) while penis usually brings negative feelings (i.e. if somebody fucks you), I think.