badmouth

• bad-mouth

Calque of a Mande term, perhaps Vai [Term?][1] or Mandinka [Term?],[2] which entered English via Gullah [Term?].[3] 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”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈbæd.maʊθ/

badmouth (third-person singular simple present badmouths, present participle badmouthing, simple past and past participle badmouthed)

1. (informal, transitive) To criticize or malign, especially unfairly or spitefully.
   • 1987 August 30, Benedict Nightingale, “Theater: England's Endless Love Affair with Farce”, in The New York Times‎, retrieved 22 July 2013:

     […] those cross-Atlantic aficionados who persistently idolize the British theater and bad-mouth Broadway.

   • 2023 December 9, Tripp Mickle, Cade Metz, Mike Isaac, Karen Weise, “Inside OpenAI’s Crisis Over the Future of Artificial Intelligence”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     He also believed that Mr. Altman was bad-mouthing the board to OpenAI executives, two people with knowledge of the situation said.