break bad

Verb

break bad (third-person singular simple present breaks bad, present participle breaking bad, simple past broke bad, past participle broken bad)

1. (colloquial) To go wrong; to go downhill.
   • "A woman came out from the East—Vermont, it was—and school-teaching was her line of business, only she hadn't been raised to it, and this was her first clatter at the game; but things had broke bad for her people, and ended in her pulling stakes and coming West all alone.1908, Rex Beach, The barrier, page 212
   • Half the bad men are only coltish cowpunchers gone wrong through rotten whiskey and luck breaking bad for them.1913, William MacLeod Raine, Crooked trials and straight, page 134
2. (Midwestern-US, Southern US, colloquial, especially) To go bad; to turn toward immorality or crime.
   • But somehow he broke bad when he was just a yearling boy, started running around at night with a bad crowd, drinking beer and wine, and fighting and getting in all kinds of trouble and wouldn't go to school.2005, Will D. Campbell, The Glad River, →ISBN, page 18
   • Nah, come on, man! Some straight like you, giant stick up his ass, all of a sudden at age, what, sixty, he's just gonna break bad?2008, “Pilot”, in Breaking Bad, spoken by Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul)

   Synonyms:

   go bad, go astray

   Antonyms:

   turn over a new leaf