Worse
adjectiveMore bad, more unpleasant, or of lower quality than something else.
How to spell worse
5 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce worse
What does worse mean?
- adjectiveMore bad, more unpleasant, or of lower quality than something else.
- adverbIn a more bad or less effective manner than before or than something else.
Worse in a sentence
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adjective
The traffic was even worse on the drive home than this morning.
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adverb
She performed worse in the second interview than the first.
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adjective
His second draft was somehow worse than the first.
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adverb
The engine ran worse after the cheap repair.
Where does worse come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
Worse comes straight from the Old English wyrsa, the comparative form meaning 'more bad' or 'inferior'. It traces back to a Proto-Germanic root wers- meaning 'to confuse, muddle, or bring into disorder', which is also the ancestor of the German verb verwirren 'to confuse'. The same root gave English the related superlative 'worst', and the pair 'worse' and 'worst' are among the small handful of English comparatives that abandon the regular -er/-est pattern entirely, much like 'good' becoming 'better' and 'best'. The spelling has been remarkably stable for a thousand years, keeping its single -s where a speaker might half-expect a doubled consonant. Because it sounds exactly like its own ending suggests, the main trap is simply remembering the silent-feeling 'r' that the modern pronunciation barely lands on.
How the word is built
- wors- (comparative of bad, from Old English wyrsa)
- -e
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