Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. More inferior, as in quality, condition, or effect.
- adj. More severe or unfavorable.
- adj. Being further from a standard; less desirable or satisfactory.
- adj. Being in poorer health; more ill.
- n. Something that is worse: Of the two routes, the eastern one is the worse. She was accused of cheating on exams, lying, and worse.
- adv. In a worse manner; to a worse degree.
- idiom. for better or (for) worse Whether the situation or consequences be good or ill: For better or worse, he trusts everyone.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- The comparative of bad, evil, ill; more bad, evil, ill, unfortunate, or undesirable; less valuable or perfect; more unfavorable or unsuccessful; less well in health, or less well off in worldly circumstances. See bad, evil, and ill.
- Sometimes used substantively in the sense of something less good, desirable, fortunate, favorable, etc.
- In logic, having, as a proposition, a character which, if belonging to one of two or more premises, must also belong to the conclusion. Thus, a negative is held to be worse than an affirmative proposition, and a particular worse than a universal. On the same principle, a spurious proposition is taken as in a second degree of particularity.
- In a more evil, wicked, severe, or disadvantageous manner; in a way that is less good, desirable, or favorable.
- In a less or lower degree; less.
- Less favorably or agreeably.
- With more severity, intensity, etc.; in a greater degree.
- To become worse.
- To worst; put to disadvantage; discomfit.
Wiktionary
- adj. comparative form of bad: more bad
- adj. this sense?) More ill.
- adj. this sense?) Of lower quality, less desirable.
- adj. this sense?) More severe or serious.
- adj. this sense?) More evil.
- adv. comparative form of badly: more badly
- adv. comparative form of ill: more ill
- adv. Less skillfully.
- adv. More severely or seriously.
- adv. Used to start a sentence.
- v. obsolete, transitive To make worse; to put at disadvantage; to discomfit.
GNU Webster's 1913
- Bad, ill, evil, or corrupt, in a greater degree; more bad or evil; less good; specifically, in poorer health; more sick; -- used both in a physical and moral sense.
- n. Loss; disadvantage; defeat.
- n. That which is worse; something less good.
- adv. In a worse degree; in a manner more evil or bad.
- v. To make worse; to put disadvantage; to discomfit; to worst. See worst, v.
WordNet 3.0
- n. something inferior in quality or condition or effect
- adj. changed for the worse in health or fitness
- adv. (comparative of `ill') in a less effective or successful or desirable manner
- adj. (comparative of `bad') inferior to another in quality or condition or desirability
Etymologies
- Old English wyrsa (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old English wyrsa; see wers- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“They made worse than nothing of it -- _worse_, I say, because they let and hindered those who might have made something of it.”
“If the Opera is to be performed the day after to-morrow, there must be another private rehearsal to-morrow, or _each time it will be given worse and worse_.”
“The general banter throughout the program between her, John, and I was fine for the most part until Adrienne’s frustration kept getting worse and worse ”
“IV. ii.71 (498,7) To do worse to you, were fell cruelty] To do _worse_ is, to let her and her children be destroyed without warning.”
“What makes this worse is the fact that I have to imagine that a very large number of cars flooded, thus how many are post-K purchases?”
“What makes this worse is the fact that I don't believe in shitty first drafts.”
“He did not like the Society, which he described as a worse scourge to humanity than communism.”
“The company said it sees fourth-quarter gross margin coming in about 3.4 percentage points below the year-earlier level, hurt by what it described as a worse-than-expected promotional environment, especially in footwear, as well as by rising costs and "a softer market for excess inventory.”
“Speaking from the Oval Office, Obama says he has put together a professional team to help clean up what he calls the worse environmental disaster that America has ever seen.”
“What's even worse is the thought of having to be a person watching their spouse go through this, being powerless to stop it, and being left in a position of worrying each time whether their loved one will come back alive, and if so how physically and emotionally damaged they will be.”
MIND MELD: Memorable Short Stories to Add to Your Reading List (Part 2 of 2)
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘worse’.
-
Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
-
EN - pronunciation fun
All words of the poem
The Chaos
by Gerard Nolst Trenité
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse <...abyss, ache, actual, advice, aerie, age, ague, aisles, alas, alien, alive, allowed and 406 more...
-
The Pain of Texting
Words that are a pain in the ass to type in on a numerical keypad on a cell phone because they have consecutive letters that share the same button:
2 - ABC
3 - DEF
4 - GHI...defcon, hi, no, attitude, xylophone, on, monday, monkey, mono, dig, back, babble and 212 more...
-
core words
my, I, mine, your, his, hers, him, her, their, theirs, our, ours and 34 more...
-
eggplantia5's Words
scintillate, marvel, cranberry, oscillate, triumph, bamboozle, grimace, magical, book, hexagon, cipher, compendium and 2727 more...
-
Words grabbed from real life conversa...
If I've seen it, heard it, or marvelled at it, I'll stick it here.
cruft, ermine, redundant, shakespearean, camino, marvelous, stupendous, chagrin, shaven, sleek, smug, stillness and 325 more...
-
Cage
cage, depart, nothing, void, strain, unconscious, never, alone, floor, God, hell, winter and 219 more...
-
aparrish's Words
the, this, and, a, that, i, me, you, him, her, she, he and 96 more...
-
Words of the Day
glabella, chirotony, nook-shotten, crapehanger, filemot, swirlie, egosurf, lexiphanicism, Ruritanian, stichometry, chrononaut, faldstool and 2015 more...
-
OM1 Lesson 5
cook, starving, pasta, spaghetti, sauce, tomato, green pepper, feeling, actually, better, flattery, trouble and 11 more...
-
Tunie: And the Band Played Waltzing M...
I used to sing this as a lullaby to my spawn—till said spawn grew big enough to understand the words, and asked me to sing something else.
Written by Eric Bogle, c. 1971.
...billabong, ghosts, no one, fewer, the call, question, what are they mar..., forgotten war, forgotten, sore, stiff, bent and 66 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for worse.

vanishedone WeirdNet is taking no chances here:
(adj): bad; unfortunate
...
(adj): exceedingly bad
(adj): very bad
...
(adj): poor to middling in quality Feb 5, 2008