{"id":1546,"date":"2024-03-08T13:53:36","date_gmt":"2024-03-08T13:53:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/?p=1546"},"modified":"2024-03-08T13:53:36","modified_gmt":"2024-03-08T13:53:36","slug":"bad-potatoes-badder-grammar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/2024\/03\/08\/bad-potatoes-badder-grammar\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad potatoes, badder grammar?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/AskUK\/comments\/1b21r2h\/are_potatoes_badder_than_usual_in_the_uk_atm\/\">\u201cAre potatoes \u2018badder\u2019 than usual in the UK atm?\u201d<\/a> This was the question posed by a reddit user last week. Despite the scare quotes, this use of the word \u2018badder\u2019 was met with general mockery (as well as some genuine attempts to answer the question: the wet weather has caused poor growing conditions for root veg this year, if you were wondering). Yet the intended meaning is completely clear to English speakers; more so than if it had been phrased \u2018are potatoes worse than usual?\u2019.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"reddit-embed-bq\" data-embed-height=\"220\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/AskUK\/comments\/1b21r2h\/comment\/ksioehk\/\">Comment<\/a><br \/>\nby<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/user\/Prestigious-One-8532\/\">u\/Prestigious-One-8532<\/a> from discussion<br \/>\nin<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/AskUK\/\">AskUK<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/embed.reddit.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"UTF-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"reddit-embed-bq\" data-embed-height=\"220\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/AskUK\/comments\/1b21r2h\/comment\/ksin8ir\/\">Comment<\/a><br \/>\nby<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/user\/Prestigious-One-8532\/\">u\/Prestigious-One-8532<\/a> from discussion<br \/>\nin<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/AskUK\/\">AskUK<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/embed.reddit.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"UTF-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>In fact, \u2018badder\u2019 has seen a <a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/ngrams\/graph?content=%22badder%22&amp;year_start=1800&amp;year_end=2019&amp;case_insensitive=on&amp;corpus=en-2019&amp;smoothing=5\">big increase in use<\/a> since the mid 20<sup>th<\/sup> century (although it\u2019s been around for a long time, and was even used by Chaucer). Google books offers numerous titles from recent years such as <em>Bigger and badder: a billionaire romance <\/em>(2016), <em>How to be a badder bitch <\/em>(2018) and the <em>Bad guys even badder box <\/em>(2019). What these titles have in common is that \u2018bad\u2019 is used with a special meaning as part of a set phrase. \u2018Bad guy\u2019 evokes a stock villain from a story, not just any old guy who happens to be bad. A \u2018bad bitch\u2019 is a tough, empowered woman. Thus a \u2018badder guy\u2019 is even more villainous, and a \u2018badder bitch\u2019 is even cooler and tougher. \u2018Can you imagine a worse bitch than Helen?\u2019 makes it crystal clear that the speaker doesn\u2019t like Helen, but \u2018can you imagine a badder bitch than Helen?\u2019 implies admiration instead.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/ngrams\/interactive_chart?content=%22badder%22&amp;year_start=1800&amp;year_end=2019&amp;case_insensitive=on&amp;corpus=en-2019&amp;smoothing=5\" name=\"ngram_chart\" width=\"900\" height=\"320\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><span style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><span style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>These are examples of what linguists call <strong>lexicalisation<\/strong>. \u2018Bad guy\u2019 and \u2018bad bitch\u2019 have become set phrases whose meaning is more than just the sum of their individual parts. In other words, the meaning of \u2018bad guy\u2019 is not just the meaning of \u2018bad\u2019 + \u2018guy\u2019, and would have to be listed as a separate entry in a dictionary. In a sense, it behaves as a single word (which is also betrayed by its special stress pattern: a <em>bad <strong>guy<\/strong><\/em> is a guy who is bad, while a <strong><em>bad <\/em><\/strong><em>guy<\/em> is a villain). This is even clearer for \u2018bad bitch\u2019: both <em>bitch<\/em> and <em>bad <\/em>have strongly negative connotations, but <em>bad bitch <\/em>is positive.<\/p>\n<p>The coinage of \u2018badder bitch\u2019 reveals a change that has already happened under the surface. Two words have become one phrase, with its own unpredictable meaning. <em>Bad <\/em>and <em>worse <\/em>are forms of the same lexeme, in the sense that they\u2019d be listed under the same dictionary entry: they are members of the same paradigm. \u2018Badder bitch\u2019 shows that changes in meaning can happen to individual forms in the paradigm, rather than lexemes, otherwise \u2018worse bitch\u2019 would automatically take on the meaning of \u2018bad bitch\u2019. <em>Bad<\/em> in the newly lexicalised <em>bad bitch <\/em>starts off its life without any comparative form, so you\u2019ve got to make up something new if you want to use one.<\/p>\n<p>Something similar can be seen in examples like <em>straight <\/em>or <em>wrought, <\/em>which started off life as past participles of the verbs <em>stretch<\/em> and <em>work. Straight <\/em>in a sentence like \u2018I have straight the string\u2019 was regularised to <em>stretched<\/em>, and <em>wrought <\/em>to <em>worked. <\/em>But the forms <em>straight <\/em>and <em>wrought <\/em>were left behind in usages like \u2018the straight string\u2019 or &#8216;the wrought iron&#8217;, revealing that they had become lexicalised as adjectives in their own right.<\/p>\n<p>Back to badder potatoes. <em>Bad <\/em>\u00a0in the context \u2018a bad potato\/apple\/egg (etc.)\u2019 has a special sense of \u2018rotten\u2019 that is somewhat lexicalised, hence \u2018badder potatoes\u2019 are more rotten, while \u2018worse potatoes\u2019 could be worse in any number of ways. Either that, or potatoes are becoming meaner and more villainous as a result of the miserable weather, which frankly I can relate to. Let\u2019s remain vigilant, just in case.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1547\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1547\" style=\"width: 512px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1547\" src=\"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/bad-potato.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"512\" height=\"512\" srcset=\"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/bad-potato.png 512w, https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/bad-potato-300x300.png 300w, https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/bad-potato-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/bad-potato-270x270.png 270w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1547\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A villainous potato coming to get you, courtesy of https:\/\/hotpot.ai\/art-generator<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cAre potatoes \u2018badder\u2019 than usual in the UK atm?\u201d This was the question posed by a reddit user last week. Despite the scare quotes, this use of the word \u2018badder\u2019 was met with general mockery (as well as some genuine attempts to answer the question: the wet weather has caused poor growing conditions for root veg this year, if you were wondering). Yet the intended meaning is completely clear to English speakers; more so than if it had been phrased&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/2024\/03\/08\/bad-potatoes-badder-grammar\/\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,173,75],"tags":[],"coauthors":[56],"class_list":["post-1546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-languages","category-lexicalisation","category-lexicon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1546"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1550,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546\/revisions\/1550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1546"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}