1680 Nega-positive

I wonder how some words creep into our language and assume meanings that seem counter-intuitive on analysis. Positive words that are really negative and vice versa. Like Vice President. Next in line to the president right? So how did being second also come to mean evil? He had all the usual vices. One of which was to aspire to the presidency...
Or take the word "neglectful." Pretty straightforward. It means full of neglect. But neglect is an absence of something. When something is neglected, it suffers from lack of attention. So how can you be full of the lack of something? One of those nega-positive words that always seems confusing to me.
Or how about News Anchors? We seem to accept that the most prestigious position on a news team is the anchor. But really. If we're going to use ship parts, why not use helmsman? The helm is the thing that controls the whole enterprise. The anchor just holds a boat in place.
And in other similes and metaphors anchors drag you down. "Her presence drug him down like an anchor." "The cement overshoes anchored the bloating floating corpse."
Maybe being an anchor is not a good thing.
Or how about the term "golden parachute." That's kind of scary when you think about it. Like a lead zeppelin. Not the free floatingest element in the periodic table. Gold is pretty heavy. If I had my druthers I believe I'd select a parachute of silk. I'm guessing gold would anchor me down pretty quickly, through the air and into about 6 feet of ground.
I wouldn't so much fly as plummet.
Like the news anchor reported about the vice-ridden vice president of a major company whose stocks plummeted because he was neglectful of his shareholders and got a golden parachute anyway.
America, ya gotta love it.