> as lemmas

1581 A. Hall tr. Homer 10 Bks. Iliades vi. 109 Nine days throughout right braue they feast, y^e banquets were not bad.

1694 A. Boyer Compl. French-master xxxii. 225/2 Is the Wine good? It is not bad. Let's drink then.

1764 J. Boswell Jrnl. 15 Nov. in Boswell on Grand Tour (1953) I. 176 It is not a bad old town.

1771 C. Burney Present State Music France & Italy 65 The intermezzo was not bad; the music pretty, but old.

1810 C. Stewart tr. Trav. Mirza Abu Taleb Khan II. xxiv. 133 The gentlemen put up with bad food, and worse wine; and whenever I complained, they took great pains to persuade me the things were not so bad, or that the master of the house was not in fault.

1835 Naut. Mag. 4 689 The idea of a sailor's chemise is not bad.

1838 in E. Eden Up the Country (1866) I. 129 These [letters] are five months old, but that is not so bad.

1840 T. C. Haliburton Clockmaker 3rd Ser. viii. 105 And a-travellin' about, and a-livin' on the best, and sleepin' in the spare bed always, ain't a bad move nother.

1860 Englishwoman's Domest. Mag. Oct. 26 ‘Not bad!’ Bloomfield replied with a loud laugh.

1880 Scribner's Monthly Oct. 909/1 They prefer, when the nominations are not too bad, to vote the regular ticket.

1900 W. R. Kennedy Hurrah Life Sailor xii. 180 We had bagged three bulls before breakfast, which was not so bad.

1922 T. S. Eliot Let. 3 Apr. (1988) I. 517 He plumes himself on being as well as an art critic..and a poet (not at all bad), an archimage in the arts of eating and drinking.

1940 Amer. Boy Feb. 2/4 ‘So The American Boy , at two dollars, isn't such a bad bargain after all’... ‘Not a bad job of research’, said the editor... ‘We'll have to score a bulls-eye for Karl.’

1954 P. G. Wodehouse & G. R. Bolton Bring on Girls i. 19 ‘What did you think of our little entertainment?’..‘Not bad,’ said Plum.

1972 R. Maugham Servant i. i. 3 The rooms aren't bad but the furniture's ghastly.

1992 N.Y. Times 24 Mar. c4/1 Turkey vultures are not normally found in a wetlands ecosystem... This river might not look so bad, but biologically it is very degraded.

2006 A. Davies Goodbye Lemon ii. 173 Not a bad movie—quite moving, actually.