here's a word which has undergone a radical shift which bothers me: chauvinist

This comes from French and originally referred to an overly patriotic veteran of the Napoleonic wars; now it is used almost exclusively (at least in the US) as a synonym for 'sexist'! Most folks think that 'male chauvinist' is a pleonasm!! (a superfluity of words, for those of you not following along at home :)

I was reminded of this by today's Random House Word-of-the-Day; here's the link, but it only points to the the current word:

http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/

http://members.aol.com/tsuwm