Post by Des Harney

"My Bard!": is nothing sacred? I was grumbling to myself recently about the abuse our poor old English Language sometimes has to put up with. The cause was my belated recognition that the the phrase "my bad" is probably here to stay. An adjective used as a noun? Heresy! Although hardly unique - and it's not exactly a neologism, either. John Legend used it in his 2004 song "Used to Love U". It was already in widespread US use, popularised via the 1995 movie “Clueless” - Amy Heckerling's loose re-working of Jane Austen's 'Emma', starring Alicia Silverstone. The script has a scene with the central character learning to drive: "Cher swerves - to avoid killing a person on a bicycle. Cher: Whoops, my bad!" Some sources suggest a 1970s derivation from street basketball trash-talk. One claims "The first citation in print is C. Wielgus and A. Wolff's, 'Back-in-your-face Guide to Pick-up Basketball', 1986". But there's at least one earlier use in print from c. 380 before, in fact. The culprit? One Mr. William Shakespeare, Esquire: 'For what care I who calls me well or ill, So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?' [So you gloss over my fault and allow my good points - in Sonnet 112] The Upstart Crow! How can I have a good grumble now? #Communication #LanguageTrivia #Shakespeare