badge

Pluralbadges

Formsbadges, badging, badged

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A distinctive mark, token, or emblem worn on clothing as a sign of rank or of membership in an organization.

   Each officer wore a badge indicating their rank.

   The volunteers received badges marking their membership in the society.

   Similaremblem, insignia, pin, crest

   Note

   The worn sense is the core of the word, though its history is uncertain. Middle English took it from Anglo-Norman or Medieval Latin words for a sign or emblem. One proposed source runs back to a Germanic word for a ring, bracelet or armband, a fitting ancestry for something worn on the body. Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843) shows the old official use: tax-gatherers recognized by their badges.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A small nameplate worn to identify its bearer, often listing further details about them.

   The receptionist's badge listed her name and department.

   Conference attendees pinned on badges showing their names and companies.

   Similarnametag, tag

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A card, sometimes carrying a barcode or magnetic strip, used to gain entry to a restricted area.

   Employees swipe their badge at the turnstile each morning.

   Visitors are issued temporary badges that expire at the end of the day.

   Similarpass, keycard

4. 4
   nouncountable

   On websites and in apps, an icon or emblem given to a user to mark an achievement.

   The app awards a badge each time a user completes a course.

   Players collect badges by clearing the harder challenges.

   Similarachievement, trophy, award

   Note

   A reward modeled on older insignia: where the worn emblem marks rank or membership, this one marks something accomplished. The verb that goes with it is unlock. You unlock a badge by, say, checking in from ten different cities. Keep it apart from the notification overlay on an app icon: that badge reports new alerts or messages, while this one is earned for an achievement.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A small overlay placed on an icon that shows additional information, such as the number of new alerts or messages waiting.

   The app icon displayed a badge with the number of unread emails.

   Notification badges piled up on every icon after the weekend.

   Note

   Interface designers use the word for the small marker clipped onto an icon, usually a number counting unread messages or new alerts. This kind of badge reports status rather than rewarding anything, which is the clearest way to tell it from the achievement badge. A notification badge describes what is waiting. An earned badge records something the user has done.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A characteristic mark or token; an outward sign of some quality.

   His worn boots were a badge of long years on the trail.

   They wore their poverty as a badge of honor.

   Similarmark, sign, token, symbol, emblem

   Note

   Here the badge has come off the coat and become a quality, an outward sign of what someone is. Shakespeare already uses it this way in Titus Andronicus: "Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge." It usually comes with a possessive, as in nobility's badge, or with badge of plus a noun, as in a badge of honor. The thing named is something a person displays, as an emblem would be.

7. 7
   nounslangcountable

   A police officer, named for the shield carried as insignia.

   Two badges were posted outside the courthouse all night.

   Every badge in the precinct knew his name.

   Similarcop, copper, officer

   Note

   Here the insignia stands for the officer who carries it, much as suit can stand for an executive. It works as an ordinary count noun: every badge, two badges. Robert De Niro's line in Martin Scorsese's Casino (1995), "every badge back home wanted to nail him," shows its natural home in tough-talking crime speech. Keep it out of formal writing, where it reads as street slang.

8. 8
   verbtransitive

   To mark or distinguish someone or something with a badge.

   Security will badge each contractor before the shift begins.

   Officials badged the delegates as they arrived.

   Note

   In commerce the verb has a branding edge. A product is badged as a brand when it carries that maker's name, whether or not that maker built it. A television badged as GE but made by someone else is the typical case. The usual construction is passive, be badged as followed by the name, and it applies to goods as readily as to people.

9. 9
   verbtransitive or intransitive

   To enter a restricted area by showing a badge for access.

   Staff must badge in at every checkpoint along the corridor.

   He badged into the server room just after midnight.

   Similarswipe

   Note

   Crime and security writing gave this verb its favorite idiom, badge one's way past or through. In David Simon's Homicide, detectives badge their way past sheriff's deputies. In Joseph Wambaugh's Fire Lover, a man badges his way through a pedestrian gate. Without an object, the verb pairs with into or in, as in badged into the data center. There the badge is the access card presented at a door.

10. 10
    verbtransitive

    To display a badge to someone, especially to prove identity or authority.

    Plainclothes officers must badge anyone they question.

    He badged the receptionist and asked to see the records.

11. 11
    nouncountable

    A distinctive mark worn by servants, retainers, and followers of royalty or nobility who, ranking below gentlemen, have no right to a coat of arms.

    Retainers of the great houses wore their lord's badge into battle.

    A bear and ragged staff served as the earl's badge among his men.

    Similaremblem, device

    Note

    Heraldry draws a line that everyday English ignores. Coats of arms belonged to gentlemen. Servants, retainers and followers ranked below them and had no right to arms, so they wore their lord's badge instead. The badge showed whose household a person belonged to, not that person's own standing. The earl's bear and ragged staff marked his men, not any arms of their own.

12. 12
    nouncountable

    A carved ornament on the stern of a ship, containing a window or a carved representation of a window.

    The shipwright carved an elaborate badge into the vessel's stern.

    A gilded badge framed the false window above the rudder.

    Note

    Shipbuilders use the word for something nobody wears: carved decoration on the stern of a vessel. At its center is a window, or a carved imitation of one. A badge may therefore light a cabin or only look as if it does. Outside nautical writing, readers will not expect this meaning, so general prose may need a gloss such as "stern ornament."

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