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bas·tard (băstərd)
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n.
1. Offensive A person born to parents not married to each other.
2. Slang
a. A person considered to be mean or contemptible.
b. A person, especially one considered to be unfortunate: “crumbling shacks where some poor bastard had tried to raise a family” (Tom Clancy).
3. Something that is of irregular, inferior, or dubious origin.
adj.
1. Offensive Born to parents not married to each other.
2. Not genuine; spurious: a bastard style of architecture.
3. Resembling a known kind or species but not truly such.
[Middle English, from Old French (probably originally meaning “son of a lord by a concubine”) : possibly dialectal northwest West Germanic *bāst-, polygynous marriage to a woman of lower status according to pre-Christian custom, concubinage (compare Old Frisian bōst, marriage, from northwest West Germanic bōst-; see bhendh- in the Appendix of Indo-European roots) + Old French -ard, pejorative noun suffix; see –ARD.]
bastard·ly adj.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
 

Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices

    Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:

    Indo-European Roots

    Semitic Roots

    The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

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