Word.ws English Dictionary

bad comes to worst

bad comes to worst is the alternative form of worst comes to worst.

Meaning of worst comes to worst

Adverb

worst comes to worst (superlative form only)

  1. (idiomatic) If a possible worst-case scenario actually occurs.
    • “Worst comes to worst, we'll make it to Cleveland and we can set down there and wait things out.” Gordon Rand nearly sneered, “Worst comes to worst? We'll crash and die, isn't that closer to the worst end of the possibility spectrum?2010, Cherie Priest, Dreadnought: A Novel of the Clockwork Century

Forms of bad comes to worst

comparativemore bad comes to worst
superlativemost bad comes to worst

Questions about bad comes to worst

What is bad comes to worst the alternative form of?
Bad comes to worst is the alternative form of worst comes to worst.

Words near bad comes to worst in the dictionary

  1. bad check
  2. bad checks
  3. bad cholesterol
  4. bad cholesterols
  5. bad comes to worse
  6. bad comes to worst
  7. bad company
  8. bad conscience
  9. bad cop
  10. bad debt
  11. bad debts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bad comes to worst (page history and authors); worst comes to worst (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “bad comes to worst.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bad_comes_to_worst. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.