• (RP) IPA: /wɜːs/
• (America) IPA: /wɝs/
• (US, New York City, archaic) IPA: [wəɪs]

1. comparative form of bad

   Your exam results are worse than before.

   The harder you try, the worse you do.

2. comparative form of ill

   She was very ill last week but this week she’s worse.

• worst

• French: pire, plus mauvais
• German: schlechter, schlimmer, ärger
• Italian: peggiore
• Portuguese: pior
• Russian: ху́же
• Spanish: peor

1. comparative form of badly

   He drives worse than anyone I know.

2. comparative form of ill.

   He's worse-mannered than she is.

3. Less skillfully.
4. More severely or seriously.
5. (sentence adverb) Used to start a sentence describing something that is worse.

   Her leg is infected. Still worse, she's developing a fever.

• French: plus mal
• German: schlechter, schlimmer
• Portuguese: pior
• Russian: ху́же

worse (worses, present participle worsing; past and past participle worsed)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To make worse; to put at disadvantage; to discomfit.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book 6”, in Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […] [a]nd by Robert Boulter […] [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], OCLC 228722708 ↗; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: The Text Exactly Reproduced from the First Edition of 1667: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554 ↗:

     Weapons more violent, when next we meet, / May serve to better us and worse our foes.

worse

1. (obsolete) Loss; disadvantage; defeat.
   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), imprinted at London: By Robert Barker, […], OCLC 964384981 ↗, 2 Kings 4:12 ↗:

     Judah was put to the worse before Israel.

2. That which is worse; something less good.

   Do not think the worse of him for his enterprise.