| 词汇 | bad man |
| 词源 | bad man; badman. A mainly historical term for an outlaw or professional gunfighter who had killed people. Many were brutes, bullies, and psychopaths, but several who carried the ti- tle were men who had killed others in arguments or in self- defense. In The Great American Outlaw (1993), Frank Richard Prassel has this to say about the compound word badman, as opposed to bad man: “Indirectly [John] Wayne gave popular language the very word. His film The Angel and the Badman (1946) fixed the compound in vernacular English with a con- tradictory meaning. A badman is not necessarily bad; goodman has no meaning. Films issued before 1946 consistently divided the term; those made later routinely adopted the compound. For the original it was of no significance; whenever John Wayne played a badman, as he did with some frequency, something was clearly wrong with the law. His mere appearance in the role of a criminal made justification for illegality pointless; it could be assumed.” |
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