Conservative newspapers love stories about the poor grammar of modern teenagers. So it’s surprising that the Daily Mail has a great example this week but doesn’t realise it.
The Mail sympathetically tells the tale of Albert Gifford, a 15-year-old from Somerset. After a family visit to the cinema, he wrote to BMW:
I was at the cinema recently, watching Godzilla, when I saw an advert for the new BMW 2 Series Coupé. But the whole advert was ruined by the slogan “it bites as bad as it barks”. This is grammatically incorrect, as ‘bad’ is not an adverb, so cannot be used in this context.
The word “badly” would be acceptable or even more exciting alternatives like ‘fiercely’. It would also be correct to say “its bite is as bad as its bark”. I was distracted with it throughout Godzilla, and didn’t enjoy it fully.
There follows a protracted correspondence between him and a very patient man at BMW. In the course of this fruitless exchange, Albert Gifford adds:
In no well-known saying is ‘bad’ used as an adverb. You can look it up in a dictionary if you like, and it will describe it as an ADJECTIVE (and maybe even a noun), which it is.
But he’s wrong.
His advice to look up “bad” in a dictionary is so good that I did it six times. The OED, Collins, Chambers, Merriam-Webster, American Heritage and Dictionary.com all list “bad” as an adverb. Most of them add that it is nonstandard, colloquial or informal, but that doesn’t mean it’s incorrect.
“Bad” is a flat adverb – an adverb that takes the same form as the adjective, with no “-ly” added to the end. Many are in standard use: hold me tight, shout it loud, aim high, drive slow, shine bright…
Sometimes flat adverbs have the same meaning as their “-ly” versions; sometimes they’re different.
“I need it bad” and “I need it badly” mean the same thing but differ in register. Likewise “They didn’t do too bad” and “They didn’t do too badly”. But in the case of the BMW ad, “badly” definitely wouldn’t work. “It bites as badly as it barks” would imply that the car is doubly useless. “It bites as bad as it barks” carries the desired sense of power and ferocity.
Some people frown on this usage, though.
Disapproval of adverbial “bad” goes back a long way. The earliest complaint about it that Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage gives is from Robert Baker in 1770:
Some writers employ the word bad as an Adverb, and would not scruple to say That was done very bad: which is not English. The Word ill (it is true) is both an Adjective and an Adverb: but bad is only an Adjective.
The usage itself, as the OED reports, goes back another two centuries:
George Turberville, 1575:
He lures, he leaps, he calles, he cries, he ioyes, he waxeth sad,
And frames his moode, according as his hawke doth well or bad.
Later examples include:
William Makepeace Thackeray, 1848:
I didn’t do my duty with the regiment so bad.Walt Whitman, 1863:
He has had frozen feet pretty bad.Muhammad Ali, 1965:
I’ll beat him so bad, he’ll need a shoehorn to put his hat on.John Lennon, 1969:
I want you so bad/It’s driving me mad
These are obviously informal and colloquial uses: dialogue, poetry, song. You wouldn’t write “I want this job so bad” in an application letter. But advertising slogans clearly aren’t bound to follow the conventions of formal prose. Advertisers can vary their English as much as lyricists, if they think it’ll work.
The only problem would be if it didn’t work. BMW’s target audience might include a lot of people who react badly to colloquialisms. But Albert Gifford, at least, is too young to drive.
Stroppy Editor 