Worse
adj, adv, noun, verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Loss; disadvantage; defeat obsolete
"Judah was put to the worse before Israel."
- 2 something inferior in quality or condition or effect wordnet
- 3 That which is worse; something less good.
"Do not think the worse of him for his enterprise."
- 1 To make worse; to put at disadvantage; to discomfit. obsolete, transitive
"Weapons more violent, when next we meet, / May serve to better us and worse our foes."
- 1 comparative form of bad: more bad comparative, form-of
"Your exam results are worse than before."
- 1 (comparative of ‘bad’) inferior to another in quality or condition or desirability wordnet
- 2 changed for the worse in health or fitness wordnet
- 1 comparative form of badly (adverb): more badly comparative, form-of
"The harder you try, the worse you do."
- 2 Less skillfully.
"He drives worse than anyone else I know."
- 3 More severely or seriously.
"The bad news affected me worse than it did my brother."
- 4 Used to start a sentence describing something that is worse.
"Her leg is infected. Still worse, she's developing a fever."
- 1 (comparative of ‘ill’) in a less effective or successful or desirable manner wordnet
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"Life in prison is worse than the life of an animal."
Etymology
From Middle English worse, werse, from Old English wiersa, from Proto-West Germanic *wirsiʀō, from Proto-Germanic *wirsizô. Cognate with Dutch wers (“worse”).
Related phrases
More for "worse"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.