Why have so many 鈥榖ad鈥� words gone good?
Awe-inspiring Black jazz musicians were "bad." Surfers throw out compliments like "sick" and "gnarly." This inversion is called amelioration.
Awe-inspiring Black jazz musicians were "bad." Surfers throw out compliments like "sick" and "gnarly." This inversion is called amelioration.
When my children鈥檚 friends think something is really great, they鈥檒l call it 鈥渟ick.鈥� Michael Jackson famously sang 鈥淏ecause I鈥檓 bad, I鈥檓 bad,鈥� and meant not that he was naughty but that he was tough and cool. 鈥淚t鈥檚 wicked tasty鈥� is high praise around Boston; in Massachusetts, wicked can be an adverb meaning 鈥渢o an extreme or impressive degree鈥� and have no moral implications. Why have so many 鈥渂ad鈥� words gone good?
When words with negative meanings acquire neutral or positive ones, it鈥檚 amelioration, which derives from the Latin melior (鈥渂etter鈥�). When words trade positive meanings for negative ones, it鈥檚 pejoration, from peior, Latin for 鈥渨orse.鈥� Linguistics texts often use nice as the classic example of a word that鈥檚 gotten better over time. It also comes from Latin, nescius (鈥渋gnorant鈥�), and it meant 鈥渇oolish鈥� when English borrowed it (via French) in the 14th century. It then began to refer to people and things that were excessively fastidious 鈥� an 18th-century writer condemns picky eaters, explaining that it鈥檚 鈥渁 Troublesome ... Thing to be Nice.鈥� Such affected delicacy was often regarded as a female virtue in the 18th century, bequeathing nice its current inoffensively positive sense. 聽
Nice has left its unpleasant origins far behind, but an ameliorated sense can coexist with a word鈥檚 earlier, negative meanings. Often such cases of inverted meaning develop in slang, language whose purpose is to mark its speakers as members of a particular subculture, differentiating them from the mainstream. What better way to oppose yourself to the stodgy Establishment than to insist, 鈥淲hat you call bad, we call good鈥�? 聽
Two sports, surfing and skateboarding, have given English a few of these inversions. These cultures have adopted words with connotations of 鈥渦npleasant,鈥� 鈥渇ormidable,鈥� or 鈥渆xtreme鈥� and transformed them into high praise: sick, rad (radical), and gnarly, which comes from gnarled, 鈥渃ontorted and knotty,鈥� and could describe the action of the waves.
In the 1920s, Black jazz musicians 鈥� marginalized in a predominantly white musical arena 鈥� developed a subculture with a rich slang, and turned bad into a compliment. Like sick and rad, bad doesn鈥檛 mean 鈥渨onderful鈥� in an anodyne way 鈥� people and things that are 鈥渂ad鈥� inspire awe and admiration, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Hip-hop artists of the 1980s strove to be ill.听
Etymologists have been unable to track the positive sense of wicked to a particular subculture. In any case, in England it鈥檚 an adjective and in Massachusetts an adverb. A Bostonian who moved to London might end up saying 鈥淭hat鈥檚 wicked wicked!鈥� And it would be great. 聽