worse.
comparative form of badly (adverb): more badly
Meaning & usage
comparative form of badly (adverb): more badly
The harder you try, the worse you do.
Less skillfully.
He drives worse than anyone else I know.
More severely or seriously.
The bad news affected me worse than it did my brother.
Used to start a sentence describing something that is worse.
Her leg is infected. Still worse, she's developing a fever.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English worse, werse, from Old English wiersa, from Proto-West Germanic *wirsiʀō, from Proto-Germanic *wirsizô. Cognate with Dutch wers (“worse”).
Loss; disadvantage; defeat
That which is worse; something less good.
Do not think the worse of him for his enterprise.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English worse, werse, from Old English wiersa, from Proto-West Germanic *wirsiʀō, from Proto-Germanic *wirsizô. Cognate with Dutch wers (“worse”).
To make worse; to put at disadvantage; to discomfit.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English worse, werse, from Old English wiersa, from Proto-West Germanic *wirsiʀō, from Proto-Germanic *wirsizô. Cognate with Dutch wers (“worse”).
comparative form of bad: more bad
Your exam results are worse than before.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English worse, werse, from Old English wiersa, from Proto-West Germanic *wirsiʀō, from Proto-Germanic *wirsizô. Cognate with Dutch wers (“worse”).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.