bad
Usage
What are other ways to say bad?
When describing things that are lacking in moral qualities or are actually vicious and reprehensible, bad is the broadest and simplest term: a bad man; bad habits. Evil applies to that which violates or leads to the violation of moral law: evil practices. Ill now appears mainly in certain fixed expressions, with a milder implication than that in evil: ill will; ill-natured. Wicked implies willful and determined doing of what is very wrong: a wicked plan.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“Positive supply/demand tension with customers is no bad thing either when it comes to future pricing and margins,” the analysts wrote in a note on Wednesday.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 15, 2026
Disruption caused by things like conflict – but also bad weather, strikes by airport or air traffic control staff, or other "extraordinary circumstances" – does not entitle you to extra compensation.
From BBC ● Jul. 15, 2026
"Next week it gets really bad for them," he told Fox News.
From Barron's ● Jul. 15, 2026
All manner of high-gloss betrayal, secrets and bad choices will be revealed.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 15, 2026
In this wild scene, would anyone notice an ordinary-looking young man with a bad scar on his forehead holding an iron rod?
From "Phineas Gage" by John Fleischman
Doing so would relieve the court of diverting its other resources to these ethics matters or, worse, undervaluing them altogether.
From Slate ● Jul. 15, 2026
Matters got worse after passersby with guns pinged holes in some of the barrels, and the poisonous stuff soaked about 15 feet down into the desert soil.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 15, 2026
I guess if Letterboxd decides to sell to a media company and becomes objectively worse, disappointed users can migrate to A24’s physical, paper-bound film logs.
From Salon ● Jul. 15, 2026
In the National Association of Sports Officials’ most recent survey of sports officials, 68.8% of more than 35,000 respondents said sportsmanship is getting worse.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 14, 2026
And then to bunk off the show when she knew what it meant to me—that was worse than the fact that I’d been fired.
From "The Red Car to Hollywood" by Jennie Liu
Toronto had the worst air quality of any major city in the world on Wednesday, the Swiss firm IQAir said, as Canadian authorities urged people to stay indoors.
From Barron's ● Jul. 15, 2026
One Instagram user said: "Might possibly be the worst tattoo I've ever seen."
From BBC ● Jul. 15, 2026
When Francesco Molinari took home the Claret Jug, his 8-under score marked the worst winning score at an Open over the last decade.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 15, 2026
Sure enough, Suzuki said in a DVD feature interview, “My Neighbor Totoro” ended up with the worst box office of all of Studio Ghibli’s films.
From Salon ● Jul. 15, 2026
Even though we were now free, and life was returning to some kind of normality, this was the worst time of all for me because Peter’s letters just stopped coming.
From "An Elephant in the Garden" by Michael Morpurgo
And in the preseason games that followed, Wemby hinted that—whether or not he actually has gotten bigger—he fully intends to be badder.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 21, 2025
The product was meant to roll on and over anything in its path, transporting personnel in all-terrain combat zones: a bigger, badder, wider Jeep.
From Slate ● Jun. 22, 2025
He speculated that Mr Musk could "reconstitute the EV charger team in bigger, badder, more Muskian way" in order to continue to benefit from US government funding to develop the network.
From BBC ● May 1, 2024
Bigger, badder and bluer than before, Quaritch 2.0 isn’t looking for unobtainium, the first movie’s stupidly, wonderfully named mineral MacGuffin.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 13, 2022
“I am such a badder ass than Nora.”
From "Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda" by Becky Albertalli
“I think that there is a lot of competition; who’s the biggest, who’s the baddest, who can handle the most,” Herberhold explained.
From Slate ● May 12, 2026
The former captain described the home draw with bottom-of-the-table Wolves on 30 December as "the baddest of the bad".
From BBC ● Jan. 4, 2026
"That was the baddest of the bad that," the former United captain said on the Gary Neville podcast.
From Barron's ● Dec. 31, 2025
Virile young conductors swoon over Bruckner at his biggest and baddest, as Mehta did when he recorded the Eighth with the L.A.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 11, 2025
It seemed like forever ago that him and Newcharlie were sitting up in our room talking about who was the baddest.
From "Miracle's Boys" by Jacqueline Woodson
Vocabulary lists containing bad
