I did good and better/best, so I might as well do bad and
worse/worst.
Now, badder isn’t really a word, but clearly baddest is or
we wouldn’t have a description for Shaft. But apparently Shaft-describing is
the only vestige of what were once real words.
Either because they were disliked or just colloquialisms, badder and baddest
haven’t been in use for at least three hundred years. Bad itself showed up in
the early thirteenth century,
first just meaning inferior, then also meaning evil although the latter
definition didn’t catch on for another hundred years. It’s thought to come from
the Old English insulting term baeddel, which means…well, it’s a derogatory
word, let’s just leave it at that.
Like I said, badder and baddest once were the comparative
forms of bad. Worse and worst were just more popular. Worse comes from the Old English wiersa/wyrsa, the
Proto Germanic wers-izon, and can even be traced to the
Proto Indo European wers, which actually means to mix up.
Worst has a similar lineage, coming from the Old English wyrresta and Proto
Germanic wers-ista and, like worse,
the word wers.
Unfortunately, there isn’t much info about why worse and
worst were more popular. However it might have something to do with how bad
didn’t initially mean evil, but worse and worst did. I’m sure this mess
definitely has to do with the fact that English is a language where we all just
pick the words we like to say, screw “definitions”.
Sources
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
I still hear baddest now and then, but it's almost slang - 'he's the baddest.'
ReplyDeleteOf course I had to go look up and see what baeddel meant...
ReplyDeleteNow I'm curious as to what the bad of worse is. That is, if you have bad, worse, worst, what should have been in the "bad" slot that's similar to worse?
ReplyDeleteOh, do you mean like literally screw definitions?
ReplyDeleteI think I will pick some words that I just like to say and start throwing them into sentences in place of other words. Maybe I can get some to stick.
"English is a language where we all just pick the words we like to say, screw “definitions”."
ReplyDeleteROFLMAO. So true. Go out in a crowd and listen to people talk. Cringe at their grammar and misused words.