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Chris -- 2018-04-11
When someone said this to me in conversation the other day, my jaw nearly hit the floor. Since the person I was speaking with didn’t laugh, I had to assume that they were being serious. The only problem was that it was a serious conversation and I had to bite my lip to stop from laughing. All I could think of was a huge Grizzly trying to sell the Daily Mail, with the headline “Stock Market Crash Ruins Millions”.
Now I’m not sure if this is in fact an eggcorn, but I did find more than a dozen examples of it on Google.
http://www.google.com/search?client=saf … 8&oe=UTF-8
The reason that I don’t think that it’s an eggcorn is that I can’t imagine people equating bears with information. I tried to think if the movie “Bad News Bears” would have had an influence on why people started using bear instead of bearer, but it just didn’t make sense. I think that it is just more likely that bearer got slurred and shortened into bearrr and then it morphed into bear. But why would people consider themselves to be a bear. And what would a bear have to do with bad news. Which brings me full circle to the Grizzly selling the Daily Mail.
I’ll stop now before I get a headache, and hand this over to the forumistas.
Last edited by lboy (2007-05-08 18:29:19)
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Until I was ten or so, I thought that my mother was claiming to be some wretched anthropomorphic grizzly with “bad tidings.”
I’m so ashamed.
Anyway, at least for me, it was an eggcorn.
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lboy wrote:
The reason that I don’t think that it’s an eggcorn is that I can’t imagine people equating bears with information.
I agree with everything you said except this one point. I think you have a wonderful eggcorn on your hands, and it’s just a matter of getting the precise imagery out.
“Bear” sometimes takes on the meaning of “something that is difficult or unpleasant” ...as in the phrase “The final exam was a real bear.” This meaning of “bear” is not a standard entry in most dictionaries, and may be listed as slang in other dictionaries, but I think we are probably all familiar with the usage.
So, when people misspeak and refer to someone as “the bear of bad news,” I think “the bear” is indeed a metaphor for something difficult that must be addressed. Is there any precedent for this? Well, yes: just ask the nine-hundred pound gorilla in the room.
2450 Google hits for “bear of bad news.” Examples:
CENTER HEATING BOILER | This is Money… installed it has installed it onto an existing system without a thourough system flush and has not added an inibitor. Sorry to be the bear of bad news …
boards.thisismoney.co.uk/tim/threadnonInd.jsp?forum=98&thread=64647&message=97982 – 67k – Cached – Similar pages
10 most significant american cars. – American Cars – Road & Track …Viewed 20 times, Yeah I bet that you’‘re cobra goes 11.7, in your dreams maybe. I’‘m hate to be the bear of bad news but you couldn’‘t do 11.7’’s with that. ...
forums.roadandtrack.com/cars/board/message?board.id=55&thread.id=2130&page=3 – 115k – Cached – Similar pages
Nothing But Headlines! – Paramedics headlinesSometimes there is a natural antagonism between road crews and dispatchers because the dispatcher is the bear of bad news, but should not neccessarily be …
www.nothingbutheadlines.com/feeds/SCID0 … 0/rss.aspx – 137k – Cached – Similar pages
Quick Reply Multiquote (Ported Xenon’s vb3.0) – vBulletin.org ForumHate to be the bear of bad news! Just installed it on my vB3.5 board and it seems to not be working. Firefox Browser Instead it’s working just like the …
www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=99408 – 83k – Cached – Similar pages
which one is better game – MixMakers.net – Your #1 Source for …Im not trying to be the bear of bad news but, uhh dont know how to say this but… NO ONE LIKES YOU!!! i suggest make a new account witch no one knows its …
www.mixmakers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=84396 – 70k – Cached – Similar pages
2007 April 20 « Kat’s Spring BlastThey don’t want to commercialize the system but I’m sorry to be the bear of bad news but no one will participant in this if they don’t know what it is. ...
kitkat11.wordpress.com/2007/04/20/ – 17k – Cached – Similar pages
diyAudio Forums Archive – Corian Turntable Funhate to be the bear of bad news but those air bubble things slowly leak, so check em every once in a blue moon. they will need to be replaced. ...
www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread/t-67089.html – 147k – Cached – Similar pages
Last edited by jorkel (2007-05-09 13:42:52)
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Maybe the metaphor of the bear, in these people’s minds at least, is similar to that of a black cat, a crow or an albatros: a foreboding omen of bad news.
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jorkel wrote:
“Bear” sometimes takes on the meaning of “something that is difficult or unpleasant” ...as in the phrase “The final exam was a real bear.” This meaning of “bear” is not a standard entry in most dictionaries, and may be listed as slang in other dictionaries, but I think we are probably all familiar with the usage.
So, when people misspeak and refer to someone as “the bear of bad news,” I think “the bear” is indeed a metaphor for something difficult that must be addressed. Is there any precedent for this? Well, yes: just ask the nine-hundred pound gorilla in the room. bq.
Hello jorkel, thanks for the reply.
I thought about your take on “bear†as in difficult for quite a while. Two things occurred to me straight off. 1) I’d never heard the term “a real bear†meaning difficult. and 2) I couldn’t imagine most people getting their heads around using bear as a metaphor for something difficult.
If “a real bear†was the basis of the change, we should see a correllation between “real bear†and “bear of bad newsâ€. Simply by checking the useage of each term in both the UK and US, I found that “real bear†is strictly a US phrase, not used in the UK. But “bear of bad news†is trans-atlantic.
The closest I could come to an explanation was “bear market†a prolonged period of falling stock prices, ie “bad newsâ€
Last edited by lboy (2007-05-10 08:13:52)
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You make some good points lboy. But I’m a little perplexed by your comment:
1) I’d never heard the term “a real bear†meaning difficult. and 2) I couldn’t imagine most people getting their heads around using bear as a metaphor for something difficult.
I’m wondering if you reside in a geographical location where these usages are not so well known. If you’d like to share that with us, you can click on Profile (in the menu above), then Personal (in the Profile Menu) and fill in your Location in the space provided. (Or, you can just tell us where you reside in a post).
Perhaps others could chime in with their experience with the usage “a real bear” to mean “difficult.” (I’d particularly like to get input from our UK expert Peter Forster).
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The ‘Daily Mail’ reference suggests that lboy is UK based, which would explain why I agree completely with the difficulties he has in grasping this idiomatic use of ‘bear’. Even stocks’n’shares- bears are not something I would hear about in my social encounters. I did, however, enjoy diskgrinder’s post on “we’ve all got our crusty bear” , which seems to lend some support to its supposedly testy temper.
I’ve just tried googling, “the bare of bad knews”, with only two hits; “the barer of bad news” is a little more common at 6,240 ghits and although it’s probably no more than mis-spelling, it does work as an image – someone is revealing, laying bare, those unfortunate tidings…
LONDON—No one likes to be the barer of bad news. But that’s no excuse for the consistently horrible way that redundancies are communicated. ...
blogs.hillandknowlton.com/tags/Change+Management/default.aspx – 66k – Cached
folks i hate to be the barer of bad news,but this news should come as shocking,to a people living a nation that has been bankrupt for some time now. ...
www.associatedcontent.com/article/20482 … cs=367338& – 44k – Cached
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Thanks Peter. lboy is actually Toronto-based, but I think that clears things up a bit to know that “a bear” does not mean “something difficult” outside of the U.S. (It’s amazing the things I just take for granted!)
I also really like the variation you came up with: “barer of bad news.” I think it’s a distinct eggcorn in it’s own right—and a pretty darn good one. If you had more to say on it, you might even start a new thread since it is otherwise buried in the current topic.
Last edited by jorkel (2007-05-10 12:33:51)
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Peter Forster wrote:
I’ve just tried googling, “the bare of bad knews”, with only two hits; “the barer of bad news” is a little more common at 6,240 ghits and although it’s probably no more than mis-spelling, it does work as an image – someone is revealing, laying bare, those unfortunate tidings…
I love “barer of bad news” and in the context of my example being a conversation, I can’t be sure what the other person actually said. I just assumed that they said “bear” it might have been “bare”. Peter, I really think that it belongs in a thread of it’s own.
Results 1 – 4 of 4 for “bare of bad news
and although it’s and extremely small sample it is interesting.
One of the four however did use a slightly different wording.
weather.com – Blog: The Weather Channel on weather news …
I hate to bring a bare of bad news but 2006 hurricane season maybe another disasterous year. However, I have some ideas to make evacuations smoother and a …
www.weather.com/blog/weather/8_8130.html – 102k – Supplemental Result – Cached – Similar pages
BTW
I’m originally from London, but I’ve been living in Canada for quite some time.
Last edited by lboy (2007-05-10 13:59:58)
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Peter Forster wrote:
The ‘Daily Mail’ reference suggests that lboy is UK based, which would explain why I agree completely with the difficulties he has in grasping this idiomatic use of ‘bear’. Even stocks’n’shares- bears are not something I would hear about in my social encounters. I did, however, enjoy diskgrinder’s post on “we’ve all got our crusty bear” , which seems to lend some support to its supposedly testy temper.
m/article/204829/bankrupt_united_states_sells_its_highway.html?cs=367338& – 44k – Cached
Which reminded me of the old joke about “Gladly, the cross-eyed bear”
Last edited by lboy (2007-05-10 14:05:16)
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“Bear of bad news” and “barer of bad news” both have my vote—I think they’re excellent.
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I have heard my young son say, more than once, of a wedding: “I don’t want to be the ring bear.” Googling “ring bear” reveals that this is a common misunderstanding; there’s even a children’s book about a wedding called “The Ring Bear.”
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Good one.
It also brings to mind ‘cross to bear’ and grin and bear it’!
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