As far as some people were concerned, Bernard L. Madoff was an affable, charismatic man who moved comfortably among power brokers on Wall Street and in Washington, a winning financier who turned out to be a dastardly investor losing billions of dollars for his clients.
The dastardly act included three teachers who were killed, at least three others were wounded, and a suspect (another teacher) was in custody Friday after a shooting on the campus of the University of Alabama; Huntsville, Alabama, officials said (February 12, 2010).
Although bastard was a common term that was used in the past, it is now considered to be unacceptable and vulgar by many people and it is recommended that its usage should be avoided!
In legal usage, illegitimacy is the more acceptable term to replace bastard, and the preferable one for avoiding unduly derogatory connotations.
While dastardly is not used as a vulgar term, it still has shameful, villainous, and despicable applications to individuals who do dastardly things.
More Recent Definitions for Dastard and Dastardly
Dastard is commonly muddled because of the sound association with its harsher rhyme, bastard and modern writers tend to use dastard as a printable euphemism for the more widely objectionable epithet.
Recent American dictionaries record one meaning of dastard as being "dishonorable, despicable" or "treacherously underhanded". So the new meaning should probably now be considered standard.
Like the noun form, the adjective dastardly has been subjected to a slipshod extension. Although most dictionaries define it merely as "cowardly", it is now often used as if it means "sneaky, underhanded; treacherous".