APAD: In someone's bad books

Meaning:

   To be in disgrace or out of favour.

 

Background:

   In the Middle Ages `one's books' was understood to mean `one's reckoning or

   cognizance', that is, the esteem in which one was held by others. To be `out

   of someone's books' meant you were no longer part of their life and of no

   interest to them. This meaning is first recorded in The Parlyament of

   Deuylles, 1509 - "He is out of our bokes, and we out of his". The use of

   books to indicate favour or disfavour is enshrined in several phrases - `good

   books', `bad books', `black books'.

 

   The first of these was `black books', which appears to have originated by

   allusion to an actual book. In 1592, Robert Greene published his intention to

   create a Blacke Booke, which was to list the misdemeanors of various classes

   of criminal. As a preamble he wrote his Black Book's Messenger, which

   included:

 

     "Ned Brownes villanies which are too many to be described in my Blacke Booke."

 

   This phrase had become used figuratively by 1785 (that is, as a form of

   disfavour, but where no actual book was in evidence) when it was recorded in

   Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

 

     "He is down in the black book, that is, has a stain in his character."

 

   `Bad books' arrived on the scene later and is first recorded in Perry's

   History of the Church of England, 1861:

 

     "The Arminians, who at that time were in his bad books."

 

- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]

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Politics has been anything but boring since last year but the past paled

compared to recent excitements. Mr. Musk, the President's man Friday, must have

felt like riding a rollercoaster, (or was it a water slide?) like the stock of his

company, and the thrill from plunging, free-fall, from the good into the bad books

of many MAGA people was all worth it.