What is the meaning of the phrase ‘a bad penny’?
Something or someone is bad and unwanted.
What is the origin of the phrase ‘a bad penny’?
The earliest recorded use of the noun ‘bad penny’ is particularly old, dating back to the Middle English period which was from the year 1150 AD to 1500 AD.
More specifically, the earliest evidence for the phrase ‘bad penny’ known to the Oxford English Dictionary dates back to the late 14th century when it was used in the writing of the poet William Langland in his prose poem titled Piers Plowman, which dates to around 1370 to 1386.
That said, however, the notion of a bad or counterfeit penny dates back much earlier, to at least Ancient Greece, when counterfeit currency was rife, due to the irregular shapes and weights of coins.
There’s also a very similar phrase relating to pennies which has a different meaning. It goes ‘to keep turning up like a bad penny’ which symbolises how counterfeit coins keep turning up in circulation. Anyone who has one wants to get rid of it and pass it onto someone else. There’s also a phrase ‘A bad penny always turns up’ which means the same thing.
What are some notable uses of the phrase ‘a bad penny’?
The phrase ‘a bad penny’ has been used multiple times in correspondence, including in the courtship letters between John Adams and Abigail Smith who later married one another, and letters between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
In literature, the phrase appears in such classic novels as Bleak House by Charles Dickens, published in 1853 to describe a character viewed with suspicion and negativity, and in The American Claimant by Mark Twain published in 1892 to describe the return of an unwelcome person.
The phrase continues to be used today to describe the persistent reappearance of something or someone unwanted.
