How did the originally honorific forms of address 君、お前、貴様 become informal or even insulting?


君 means ruler, お前 honourable one towards me, 貴様 worthy appearance.

How did these originally honorific terms of address become informal or even
insulting?




Something similar happened in English, where "you", a formerly polite form
which contrasted with "thou", is now the common second person pronoun with no
inherent politeness.

It's a kind of semantic change called pejoration. In a society which values
politeness, people will use a word B which sounds nicer/more polite than the
usual word A. Once everybody uses B, B will become the norm, and people will
start using a new word C to sound polite. Once C is being used as the polite
word, using A will have become rude.

