11 Words and Phrases That Used to Be Insults—but Are Now Compliments

“You know I’m bad, I’m bad, come on, you know” —Michael Jackson, Bad

Around here, we love words, all kinds of words. But have you ever noticed how insults evolve to mean their opposite? Over time “fightin’ words” turn into praise—compliments that hold just enough of their original meaning to make them interesting. The classic example is “bad“—especially with a few extra “A”s to stretch it out to “baaaad”—meaning sexy, hot, not your Sunday school teacher’s idea of good. But rockers were by no means the first to turn “bad” upside down—according to the Oxford dictionary (OED), the first inverted use of “bad” dates all the way back to 1897.