365: good bad and evil Dec 8, 2015

The opposite of 'good' is somewhat vague, often it is 'bad', and sometimes it is 'evil', though this would not have always been the case. 'Good' comes from the word 'god' (see Word Facts May 26, 2015). 'Evil' has not changed meaning over time since its Old English origin, 'yfel'. Bad has changed the most of the three. By Middle English, the sense of the word that we use today had already set, but it derives from the Old English, 'bǣddel' which means ‘hermaphrodite' or 'womanish man', as societal views of what is to be expected of men and women have unfortunately been around for millennia. The derivation of bad is the reason why the Modern German equivalent is 'schelcht' while for 'evil' the equivalent is the quite similar, 'übel'