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worst

adjectiveadverbnounverbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//wɜːst//
  • United States//wɜɹst//
  • //wɔːst//

superlative form of bad: most bad Most inferior; doing the least good.

adjective

  1. 1

    superlative form of bad: most bad Most inferior; doing the least good.

    I think putting oil on a burn is the worst thing you can do.

  2. 2

    superlative form of bad: most bad Most unfavorable.

    That's the worst news I've had all day.

  3. 3

    superlative form of bad: most bad Most harmful or severe.

    The worst storm we had last winter knocked down our power lines.

  4. 4

    superlative form of bad: most bad Used with the definite article and an implied noun: something that is worst.

    None of these photographs of me are good, but this one is definitely the worst.

Etymology

From Middle English worste, wurste, warste, werste, wirste, from Old English wierrest, from Proto-Germanic *wirsistaz, superlative form of *ubilaz (“bad, evil”); compare worse. Cognate with Old Saxon wirsista, wirrista (“worst”), Old High German wirst, wirsesto, wirsisto (“worst”), Danish værst (“worst”), Swedish värst (“worst”), Icelandic verstur (“worst”).

adverb

  1. 1

    Also a form of badlysuperlative form of badly: most badly; least well.

    My sore leg hurts worst when it's cold and rainy.

    This is the worst-written essay I've ever seen.

    She's the worst-informed of the lot.

noun

  1. 1

    Something or someone that is the worst.

    The humorist helps people to explore and confront their worsts

verb

  1. 1

    archaicTo make worse.

  2. 2

    datedTo grow worse; to deteriorate.

    Anne haggard, Mary coarse, every face in the neighbourhood worsting.

  3. 3

    rareTo outdo or defeat, especially in battle.

    The […] Philistines were worsted by the captivated ark.

    Her joy and pride in the honour paid to her darling son Adam was beginning to be worsted in the conflict with the jealousy and fretfulness which had revived when Adam came to tell her that Captain Donnithorne desired him to join the dancers in the hall.

    Jo carried her love of liberty and hate of conventionalities to such an unlimited extent that she naturally found herself worsted in an argument.

Forms

plural
worsts
past tense
worsted
past participle
worsted
present participle
worsting
third person singular
worsts
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).