Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
| Domain | Definition |
Computing | Bad Thing n. [very common; always pronounced as if capitalized. Orig. fr. the 1930 Sellar & Yeatman parody of British history "1066 And All That", but well-established among hackers in the U.S. as well.] Something that can't possibly result in improvement of the subject. This term is always capitalized, as in "Replacing all of the 9600-baud modems with bicycle couriers would be a Bad Thing". Oppose Good Thing. British correspondents confirm that Bad Thing and Good Thing (and prob. therefore Right Thing and Wrong Thing) come from the book referenced in the etymology, which discusses rulers who were Good Kings but Bad Things. This has apparently created a mainstream idiom on the British side of the pond. It is very common among American hackers, but not in mainstream usage here. Compare Bad and Wrong. Source: Jargon File. |
Multilingual Slang | Catalan (mal karma). (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The phrase originated in the humorous parody of British history text books, 1066 and All That (1930) by W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman, which speaks of rulers who were Good Kings but Bad Things, and has since become a mainstream idiom in the United Kingdom.
The phrase is familiar if not common in the United States. It achieved some visibility via the 1981 Harold Kushner book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, followed by the 1998 movie Very Bad Things. Since in these two sources the Bad Things include death, in the US the term has come to be a sort of ironic euphemism for a serious problem whose consequences would be lengthy and horrifying to describe.
An example from a military dictionary:
See also: Bad and Wrong
The original version of this article came from the Jargon file.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Bad Thing."
Crosswords: BAD THING |
| Specialty definitions using "BAD THING": intelligent key ♦ non-optimal solution ♦ write-only code. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Oh, monsieur, you are a man. If somone loved you very much, so that your happiness was the only thing that she wanted in the world, but she did a bad thing to make certain of it, could you forgive her? (Casablanca; writing credit: Murray Burnett; Joan Alison) Bart! You're saying butt kisser like it's a bad thing! (The Simpsons; writing credit: Artur Brauner; Paul Hengge) You have killed 123 people, I'd say that is a very bad thing you did, Yulaw. (The One; writing credit: Glen Morgan; James Wong) You say it like it's a bad thing. (Beautiful Girls; writing credit: Scott Rosenberg) You did a very, very bad thing, John. (Eraser; writing credit: Tony Puryear; Walon Green) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Author | Quotation |
Samuel Taylor Coleridge | Swans sing before they die -- t'were no bad thing did certain persons die before they sing. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | |
| Title | Author | Quote |
Emma | Austen, Jane | It would not be a bad thing for her to be very much in love with a proper object. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
baby did a bad bad thing | 9 |
very bad thing | 9 |
bad bad thing | 3 |
the best bad thing | 2 |
bad thing | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "BAD THING"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||
Japanese Kanji | 悪 (bad person, evil, wickedness). (various references) | ||||
Japanese Katakana | わる (bad person, to break, to crack, to cut, to dilute, to divide, to halve, to rip, to separate, to smash, to split). (various references) | ||||
Pig Latin | adbay ingthay | ||||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-b-d-g-h-i-n-t" | |
-1 letter: bathing, dingbat. | |
-2 letters: bandit, bating, dating, hading, hating. | |
-3 letters: baith, bhang, bight, dight, giant, habit, night, tabid, thing. | |
-4 letters: adit, agin, anti, baht, bait, band, bang, bani, bath, bind, bint, dang, ding, dint, dita, gadi, gain, gait, ghat, gnat, hand, hang, hant, hind, hint, nigh, tain, tang, than, thin, ting. | |
-5 letters: aid, ain, ait, and. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-b-d-g-h-i-n-t" | |
+2 letters: adhibiting. | |
+3 letters: badmouthing. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)42 41 44 54 48 49 4E 47 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
|
Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01000010 01000001 01000100 00100000 01010100 01001000 01001001 01001110 01000111 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)B A D   T H I N G |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0042 0041 0044 0054 0048 0049 004E 0047 |
Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)36353825442434841 |
| 1. Crosswords 2. Usage: Modern 3. Usage: Commercial 4. Quotations: Familiar | 5. Quotations: Fiction 6. Expressions: Internet 7. Translations: Modern 8. Anagrams | 9. Orthography 10. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
