"Break bad": 2; "break nasty": 0

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 12:23 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> In HDAS, there occurs the idiom, "break bad." However, "break nasty,"
> a slightly older idiom with exactly the same meaning, which, IMO, is
> way cooler, does *not* appear in HDAS. I've hassled poor Jon about
> this to the extent that he has promised to take official note of
> "break nasty," at some point. [Here, I should note that I was just
> shucking and jiving with all of that mess, Jon. You can just ignore
> all the crap that I've given you WRT "break nasty."] Recently, a movie
> has been released with the title, Breaking Bad.
>
> So, "break bad" is in HDAS and in a movie title, whereas "break nasty"
> has yet to appear in print, b n, 2; b b, 0.

Wilson, I think you might be talking about the cable series "Breaking
Bad" on AMC (Season 2 starts in March), about a chemistry teacher who
starts up a meth lab to support his family. Here's how the star of the
show, Bryan Cranston, explained the expression:

----
http://blogs.amctv.com/breaking-bad/2008/03/live-chat-with.php
The term "breaking bad" is a southern colloquialism and it means when
someone who has taken a turn off the path of the straight and narrow,
when they've gone wrong.
----

--Ben Zimmer

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