By a strange perversion, this word is used by rustics in N. England, Kentucky, Missouri, &c. in the sense of abominable, outrageous; see ‘Dialect Notes,’ i. 23, 79; ii. 327. A similar use is found in Herefordshire. (N.E.D.)
1833. It would be ridic’lous if it should be a bar [said the Kentuckian], them critters sometimes come in here, and I have nothing but my knife.—Knick. Mag., i. 90.
1834. “Why, sir,” said an Illinois man to me, who was on the spot shortly afterward, “those Indians behaved most ridiculous. They dashed children’s brains against the door-post; they cut off their heads, they tore—.”—C. F. Hoffman, ‘A Winter in the Far West,’ i. 267 (Lond., 1835). (Italics in the original.)
1890. Ridiculous is used in Barbadoes, where many old-time expressions survive, to mean strange, unexpected, untoward. A man once informed me that the death by drowning of a relative was “most ridiculous.”—A correspondent of Notes and Queries, 7 S. ix. 453.
