bad penny
2
7.7
- idiom
- Informal
:
un mal regreso
- You're like a bad penny, you keep coming back.
- back like a bad penny
Examples
-
The 1947 UFO controversy of Roswell, N.M. is like a bad penny: it keeps turning up.
Blog text (21) -
Anyway, he'll turn up, like a bad penny.
-
It's time to throw out the bad penny and try something else.
Blog text (13) -
The bad penny that keeps turning up.
-
Everybody expects a bad penny to turn up sooner or later.
-
Yes, back again, like the proverbial bad penny.
-
He keeps turning up like a bad, bad penny.
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You can try to forget her, but she'll come back like a bad penny.
-
Every time I think I've left my old habits behind, they reappear like a bad penny.
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He always shows up at the worst times, just like a bad penny.
Synonyms
27
2.1
A person who keeps bothering others
2
9.5
A person who often annoys or causes trouble
1
6.3
A person or thing that keeps causing trouble for someone
1
7.0
Something that keeps causing you trouble or worry
How Often
Surface Forms
Morphology
bad + penny
Although a learner who knows 'bad' and 'penny' can tell it refers to something negative and a coin, those constituents do not signal the key meaning of repeated, unwelcome return. The phrase is proverbially idiomatic ('a bad penny always turns up') and the recurrence/personification sense cannot be predictably derived from the literal words, so a B1 learner would not reliably infer the full meaning.
Etymology
Bad penny comes from a time when a damaged or fake coin was called a bad penny and people tried to avoid it, but the coin still kept turning up in pockets and at shops. So, like that coin, a 'bad penny' today means someone or something 'unwanted' that keeps coming back.