[Ads-l] "my bad" redux

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

> On Tue, Oct 23, 2018 at 5:25 PM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:
> 
>> I have always assumed that, in the expression "my bad," "bad" is being
>> used adjectively, with the noun it modifies being implicit, rather than
>> "bad" being used as a noun.

these two accounts can be resolved into one my treating "bad" here as a noun (historically) derived by beheading (as i've called it) of an adjective + noun composite -- as in the noun "attending" historically derived from "attending N" (where the N is "physician, doctor", etc.). 

there's a beheading Page on my blog, with links to postings on the topic:
  https://arnoldzwicky.org/linguistics-notes/beheading/

arnold

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org