Miss Rose’s Linguistics Lesson

Now today we are going to talk about a trendy little phrase that’s taken the colloquial mainstream by storm in recent years to express a sort of apology for one’s mistake: ‘My bad.’ As a gesture of accepting responsibility it’s not bad, and certainly it’s more polite to assume the blame in any way than to ignore the issue altogether. But is it entirely correct, grammatically speaking?

Ah. Let’s break it down into its two disparate parts, namely, the words my and bad. My is a possessive pronoun, implying ownership of or accountability for the object it modifies. So far so good. Bad is here used as the object of the sentence, which makes you think it is the main character, or in other words the thing being possessed. It could be something – anything – as long as it was indeed a thing, or in other words a noun. But alas, bad is not a noun; it is an adjective, meaning it can only describe a noun. An adjective is only a concept insofar as it describes a noun; it is not, in its own right, a real thing. Therefore you cannot own an adjective. You might just as well say ‘My green,’ or ‘My curious.’

This phrase always leaves us floundering in helpless suspense, wondering anxiously, ‘Your bad what? Yes, yes, but what is it you have that is bad?’

Ha. Can you tell we’ve been reading Lynne Truss recently?