When “Bully” Was a Fine Fellow

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you?

This is Rob from Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Hello, Rob and Oshkosh.

Welcome to the program.

What’s on your mind?

I’m wondering about the word bully.

It’s a big word these days, right?

And it’s like I had to have someone tell me at my work that someone was a bully, and that’s just the way it was.

So then it got me thinking about where does this word even come from?

And, you know, how do, well, the deeper question is how do people become bullies in the first place?

Yeah. So bully, B-U-L-L-Y. And this is, you have bullies in the workplace? What are they like?

They’re the type of people who do not want to get along, it seems.

Well, the word bully itself has a really weird history because you won’t believe this, but as early as the 1530s, the term bully was kind of a term of endearment.

It meant a sweetheart, and it could be applied either to male or females.

And it’s uncertain what the origin of that use of bully is.

It might come from a Dutch word boel, B-O-E-L, which means lover or brother.

And actually, if you go back to Shakespeare, it was used to mean sort of a fine fellow or good chap.

If you look at Midsummer Night’s Dream, bottom is addressed as sweet bully bottom.

You know, it’s a fond word.

And over time, the meaning diverged in a couple of different ways.

The word bully also came to mean jolly or admirable, like bully for you. Or you might remember Teddy Roosevelt talking about his bully pulpit.

I always thought that had to do with, yeah, I thought that that had to do with him being forceful when he was expressing his convictions forcefully.

But actually, he was talking about how he had such a good bully pulpit. What a wonderful thing that was.

And he would say things like, I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I’ve got such a bully pulpit.

The other weird thing about bully is that this notion of good chap also morphed somehow into the idea of a swaggering hail fellow, well met.

And then it took on the meaning of somebody who harasses people or intimidates people who are weaker than them.

And that’s a bit of a puzzle because it might be associated with the animal known as a bull, you know, which is very forceful and bullish behavior.

Or it may have come to be associated with the idea of a ruffian who protects a prostitute.

So we’re not really sure about how that came to mean.

You know, it went through a process of pejoration, as they say.

It became something worse than the original meaning.

But Grant and I were talking about this at one point, and you were talking about masculinity and the difficulty of expressing affection.

Yeah, when there is earnest affection between men, oftentimes it manifests not even just in personal relationships, but culturally as kind of aggressive, maybe playful aggression, but that can turn to real aggression.

But also, terms for men that are complementary, just like terms for women that are complementary, often take a negative turn.

Like, we don’t use the word champ today, except in sarcastic or ironic uses, basically, in English.

Like, you might go, nice going, champ, when somebody messes up or fails, right?

And dandy is the same way.

A dandy, at one point, was a complementary word for somebody who was well-dressed.

And now, a dandy is somebody who’s overdressed, or they’re over-decorated.

And more than a few times in English, we see this happen where, for whatever reason, complimentary terms for men can’t stand alone.

They turn, the affection turns into aggressiveness.

And it’s just part of the way that we handle masculinity, I think, in our North American cultures and our European cultures.

That makes a lot of sense.

So as for your question about bullies in the workplace, I mean, I don’t know.

Those are people who just bring their bullying behavior into the workplace.

Yeah, that’s a different show.

That’s a different radio program.

It’s complicated.

But that leap that Martha had, that leap, that pejoration, that growing worse from the word that was sweetheart to be a swaggering man who is a thug or overbearing, aggressive person, that’s quite a leap, isn’t it?

Yeah, it definitely marks.

Yeah, it might be cold comfort for your situation, but that’s what we have.

Right. That does make a lot of sense, actually. It tracks. I could say that it tracks.

Well, Rob, good luck in the workplace, and hopefully other people will join you in handling those bullies and putting them in their place.

Sure. All right. Thank you.

Take care now. Bye-bye.

Bye.