Homo That’s Too Bad
posted by on June 13 at 10:49 AM
Did you know the word “bad” was originally homophobic?
So surmises the Oxford English Dictionary (you need only a Seattle Public Library card to log in here):
[ME. badde appears in end of 13th c., rare till end of 14th: see below. Regularly compared badder, baddest, from 14th to 18th c. (in De Foe 1721), though Shakespeare has only the modern substitutes worse, worst, taken over from evil, ill, after bad came to be = evil.Prof. Zupitza, with great probability, sees in bad-de (2 syll.) the ME. repr. of OE. bæddel ‘homo utriusque generis, hermaphrodita,’ doubtless like Gr. [pronounced something like androgynos, but I can’t figure out how to copy the Greek here—AKW], and the derivative bædling ‘effeminate fellow, womanish man, [Greek word, pronounced malakos—AKW],’ applied contemptuously; assuming a later adjectival use, as in yrming, wrecca, and loss of final l as in mycel, muche, lytel, lyte, wencel, wench(e. This perfectly suits the ME. form and sense, and accounts satisfactorily for the want of early written examples. And it is free from the many historical and phonetic difficulties of the derivation proposed by Sarrazin (Engl. Studien VI. 91, VIII. 66), who, comparing the etymology of madde, mad, earlier amad […], would refer badde to OE. [untranscribable Old English—AKW], ‘forced, oppressed,’ with a sense-development parallel to that of L. captvus, ‘taken by force, enslaved, captive,’ It. cattivo, F. chetif, ‘miserable, wretched, despicable, worthless.’ No other suggestion yet offered is of any importance; the Celtic words sometimes compared are out of the question.]
I guess we shouldn’t expect the pejorative “gay” to go out of style any time soon.
Sorta gives new meaning to the word "bad-assed."
So does that mean I have to take "bad" out of my vocabulary so as not to offend "the gays"?
@2: Probably only if the gay in question is both gay and a philologist.
Super interesting. I love this shit.
The Old English, btw, is just "gebaeded, gebaedd" which is apparently from the verb "gebaedan," "to compel, constrain, force, impel, urge, oppress."
The OED etymology in this particular case seems suspect to me simply because it is *oh so complex.* Etymologies are usually quite elegant, and this one is convoluted. Doesn't mean it's wrong, but it's suspect.
Here's what AHD gives:
Most people might think that the slang usage of bad to mean its opposite, “excellent,” is a recent innovation of Black English. While it is of Black English origin, this usage has been recorded for over a century; the first known example dates from 1897. Even earlier, beginning in the 1850s, the word appears in the sense “formidable, very tough,” as applied to persons. Whether or not the two usages are related, they both illustrate a favorite creative device of informal and slang language—using a word to mean the opposite of what it “really” means. This is by no means uncommon; people use words sarcastically to mean the opposite of their actual meanings on a daily basis. What is more unusual is for such a usage to be generally accepted within a larger community. Perhaps when the concepts are as basic as “good” and “bad” this general acceptance is made easier. A similar instance is the word uptight, which in the 1960s enjoyed usage in the sense “excellent” alongside its now-current, negative meaning of “stiff.”
One bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch of gays!
In the Middle English period the word seems to have already developed most of its modern senses (except for bad=good as the AHD citation above indicates), while not particularly including the "gay" sense: see http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=id&id=MED3403&egs=all&egdisplay=open which shows a lot of quotations from Middle English in the Middle English Dictionary.
They also suggest it may be related to OE bæddel and bædling, "effeminate person, hermaphrodite", but aren't certain, and since there are no clear citations before roughly 1300 (which is substantially after Old English had given way to Middle English, which is quite different), I think this can only be speculation, and so the word may or may not have been related to the slurs.
(Yes, I'm a geek and I research Middle English for fun and no-profit.)
From http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=b
"bad: 1203, mystery word, no apparent relatives in other languages. Possibly from two related O.E. derogatory terms: bæddel and bædling "effeminate man, hermaphrodite, pederast." Originally "defective, inferior;" sense of "evil, morally depraved" is first recorded 1300. A rare word before 1400, and evil was more common until 1700. In U.S. place names, sometimes translating native terms meaning "supernaturally dangerous." Ironic use as a word of approval is said to be at least since 1890s orally, originally in Black Eng., emerging in print 1928 in a jazz context. Badder, baddest were used as recently as Defoe (18c.), but yielded to comp. worse and superl. worst (taken over from evil, ill), from P.Gmc. *wersizon, comp. of *wers-. Farsi has bad in more or less the same sense as the Eng. word, but this is regarded by linguists as a coincidence. The form of the words diverges over time (Farsi bad comes from M.Pers. vat), and such convergent evolutions are found across many languages, given the vast number of words in each and the limited range of sounds humans can make to signify them. Among other coincidental matches with English are Korean mani "many," Chinese pei "pay," Nahuatl (Aztecan) huel "well," Maya hol "hole."
I forgot what an amazing dancer Michael Jackson is/was. (I sort of feel like he's dead or something now.) He made it look so easy.
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