Nadine in San Antonio, Texas, disagrees with her boyfriend, who insists that the word surprise suggests something inherently good, so it’s impossible to call something a bad surprise. A quick look at data from the Brigham Young University corpora of English-language, however, shows that he’s wrong. The word surprise keeps company with plenty of negative words in English, such as nasty, unpleasant, and yes, bad. This is part of a complete episode.
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