Badmouth
//ˈbæd.maʊθ// verb, slang
verb, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
Verb
- 1 To criticize or malign, especially unfairly or spitefully. informal, transitive
"[…] those cross-Atlantic aficionados who persistently idolize the British theater and bad-mouth Broadway."
- 2 speak unfavorably about wordnet
Example
More examples"Ivan continued to badmouth Rima."
Etymology
Calque of a Mande term, perhaps Vai [Term?] or Mandinka [Term?], which entered English via Gullah [Term?]. Compare Japanese 悪口(わるぐち) (waruguchi, “badmouthing”), which is a compound of 悪(わる) (waru, “bad, wicked”) and 口(くち) (kuchi, “mouth”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.