If you are an old subscriber and not getting posts, please subscribe again. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) The history of the word nigger is often traced to the Latin word niger, meaning Black. Both Oxford and Random House have entries for “bad” meaning “formidable” and hence “formidably skilled,” with examples dating from the 1840s and ’50s. In modern (1990s, originally African-American vernacular) slang, its use with reference to a man is sexually contemptuous, from the "woman" insult. Although a street term, it is virtually synonymous with the earlier Latin phrase, 'mea culpa'. “What is more unusual is for such a usage to be generally accepted within a larger community,” the note continues. It turns out we might have been wrong about the age and origins of everyone's favorite word. The word began to break into cinema when it was uttered once in the film Vapor (1963) and in two Andy Warhol films – Poor Little Rich Girl (1965) and My Hustler (1965), and later in each of two 1967 British releases, Ulysses and I'll Never Forget What's'isname. ), Random House also cites this line from a 1927 review in Variety: “In Duke Ellington’s dance band Harlem has reclaimed its own. These range from “a person being described as joyous” to also saying that something is “brightly colored.”The video above also explores other, lesser-known meanings. Today, in the OED’s estimation, this sense of “bad” as an intensifier is colloquial and nonstandard, and it appears “chiefly” in North American usage. Its place of birth is actually far from New York: the word appears to come from Kansas, or at least that is where we first see evidence of it in written use. doesn’t go quite that far. It doubtless has as little of a direct descent from this as it … To an innocent pair of English ears in Sydney, it came as something of a shock. The first citation in print is C. Wielgus and A. Wolff's, 'Back-in-your-face Guide to Pick-up Basketball', 1986: "My bad, an expression of contrition uttered after making a bad pass or missing an opponent.". The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang says that, especially in African-American English, “bad” is used to mean “wonderful; deeply satisfying; stunningly attractive or stylish; sexy.”, The dictionary’s earliest reference is from George Ade’s Pink Marsh (1897): “She sutny fix up a pohk chop ’at’s bad to eat.” (The book is a collection of sketches about a fictional black shoe-shine man named William Pinckney Marsh, a k a Pink. The word became rarer in print in the 18th century when it came to be regarded as vulgar. My brave.". The American slang term is first recorded in 1914, the shortened form fag shortly after, in 1921. Used among male homosexuals from 1930s. The 1994 'Green revision pages' for the movie script has a scene with Alicia Silverstone's character learning to drive: "Cher swerves - to avoid killing a person on a bicycle. As far as we can tell, the first example in which this “badness” is clearly viewed with admiration appeared in the 1870s. See other phrases and sayings from Shakespeare. Here “bad” is used, the dictionary says, “as a general term of approbation” and means “good, excellent, impressive; esp. The modern history of swearing: Where all the dirtiest words come from As society evolves, so do our curse words. My bag []. See other phrases that were coined in the USA. It's also a world away from pick-up basketball, which is an informal street sport where players frequently call out to each other (trash talking), and is a well-known source of street lang. Its immediate origin is unclear, but it is based on the word for "bundle of sticks," ultimately derived, via Old French, Italian and Vulgar Latin, from Latin fascis.. While it's pretty fucking hard to pin down the exact lineage of the word… It dates back to the 19th century, as we’ll explain later. Enter your email address to subscribe to the blog by email. … Ellington’s jazzique is just too bad.”, The OED also includes this usage, which it labels as slang. Wouldn’t that be best stated as “love so badly”? We find some of these early citations ambiguous; the speaker’s meaning isn’t always clear-cut. There’s the F-word and the C-word. The Fa-Word: An Insulting Slur In the Spotlight In April, basketball superstar Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers was fined $100,000 by the NBA for calling a referee the Fa-word… But “bad” was used further back in a slightly different and possibly unrelated slang sense. However it was not "my bad" as in "I did … A bad word made good. Demon is an ancient Greek word (written ΔΑΙΜΩΝ in Greek) synonymous to the concepts of god, the divine and fate. “I did a quick etymology rundown on the word gay and found some now rare and out-of-date uses that are also pretty cool,” Danielle Bainbridge, the video’s host and creator, explains. One folk etymology claims that it derives from “for unlawful carnal knowledge,” but this has been debunked by etymologists. But in an expression like “love so bad,” the word is an adverb, not an adjective. That's clearly not the case any longer of course and any word or phrase that is widely known is datable quite precisely via website logs. The word “dame”, when used to describe a woman, is typically a complimentary term, even though it has been regarded in recent times (1970s-on) as mildly dismisive or objectifying. As we’ve written before on the blog, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage maintains that the adverb “bad” is interchangeable with “badly” after the verbs “want” and “need.”. Now, let’s take a closer look at the slang use of the adjective “bad.” As we mentioned above, the use of “bad” to mean “good” dates back to the 19th century. Meaning just “a smell or scent,” odor entered the English language about 1300 and came from the Old French odor and the Anglo-French, odour , themselves children of the Latin word, odor , of the same meaning. Grammar, etymology, usage, and more, brought to you by Patricia T. O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman, Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window). Jaywalker seems like a word that must have originated in New York City, since so many pedestrians of that metropolis seem to have no regard for crossing the street at the appointed time or place. The surprising thing about this use of “bad”—apart from the reversed meaning—is that it’s not recent. This slang term originated in about 1970. The two great exceptions are snafu (situation normal: all fucked up) and fubar (fucked up beyond all recognition), which grew out of the military's RFA (rage for acronyms) in World War II. The word "cop" is an old Anglo-Saxon verb for catch, grab or capture, deriving from a noun "cop" dating back at least to the 1100s. This … And check out our books about the English language. Andrew Clark. Cher: Whoops, my bad." This word became the noun, Negro (Black person) in English, and simply the color Black in Spanish and Portuguese. It dates back to the 19th century, as we’ll explain later. Although there are several theories about its origin, the origin of the term usually goes back to Panama at the beginning of the 20th century.