A few bad apples: actual usage of a proverb and its derivative idiom in contemporary American English

Abstract

The article deals with the actual usage of the Anglo-American proverb The bad apple spoils the whole barrel (also known as The rotten apple injures its neighbor) in contemporary American English. Apart from the proverb, the article considers the separate use of its nominal part, bad/rotten apples, as a separate idiom in its own right. Emphasis is put on the semantic and pragmatic shift that occurs when the idiom is used with quantifiers (e.g. a few) and appears to juxtapose the idiom and the proverb in contemporary American political discourse, especially the one connected to the BLM movement.