Badness

//ˈbæd.nəs// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The quality or degree of being bad. countable, uncountable

    "The badness of a dignitary harm derives from the victim's belief that a perpetrator is willing to override or ignore her standing as a person with rights, with dignity, as evidenced by the wrongful criminal deed; […]"

  2. 2
    an attribute of mischievous children wordnet
  3. 3
    used of the degree of something undesirable e.g. pain or weather wordnet
  4. 4
    that which is below standard or expectations as of ethics or decency wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
mischievousnessnaughtinessevilnessailmentair pollutionbad

Example

More examples

"There is no objective measure of a word's badness. It all comes down to context."

Etymology

From Middle English baddenes, badnes, badnesse; equivalent to bad + -ness.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.