break bad
English
[edit]
Pronunciation
[edit]Verb
[edit]break bad (third-person singular simple present breaks bad, present participle breaking bad, simple past broke bad, past participle broken bad)
- (colloquial, of an event or of one's fortunes) To go wrong; to go downhill. [from 1908]
- 1908, Rex Beach, The barrier, page 212:
- "A woman came out from the East—Vermont, it was—and school-teaching was her line of business, only she hadn't been raised to it, and this was her first clatter at the game; but things had broke bad for her people, and ended in her pulling stakes and coming West all alone.
- 1913, William MacLeod Raine, Crooked trials and straight[1], page 134:
- Half the bad men are only coltish cowpunchers gone wrong through rotten whiskey and luck breaking bad for them.
- For more quotations using this term, see Citations:break bad.
- (colloquial, especially Southern US and Midwestern US, of a person) To go bad; to turn toward immorality or crime.
- Synonyms: go bad, go astray
- Antonym: turn over a new leaf
- 2005, Will D. Campbell, The Glad River, →ISBN, page 18:
- But somehow he broke bad when he was just a yearling boy, started running around at night with a bad crowd, drinking beer and wine, and fighting and getting in all kinds of trouble and wouldn't go to school.
- 2008, “Pilot”, in Breaking Bad, spoken by Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul):
- Nah, come on, man! Some straight like you, giant stick up his ass, all of a sudden at age, what, sixty, he's just gonna break bad?
- 2012, John Grisham, The Racketeer, →ISBN:
- My nephew was breaking bad, getting deeper into the crack trade, […]
- For more quotations using this term, see Citations:break bad.
Related terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]to go wrong, to turn toward immorality or crime
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