badly
/ˈbæd.li/
badly adverb: in a bad manner.
Adverb
badly (comparative worse, superlative worst)
- In a bad manner.
- Things are going badly for her: she did badly in her exams owing to a badly designed studying schedule.
- Don't think badly of me: give me the benefit of the doubt.
- Antonyms:
- well
- Very much; to a great degree.
- I want it so badly.
- Look at these split ends! You badly need a haircut!
- Synonyms:
- acutely, very much, awfully, almighty, impossibly, beyond, damn, drastically, exceedingly, extraordinarily
Adjective
badly (comparative more badly, superlative most badly)
badly meaning in Tamil, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada
badly in Tamil
- மோசமாக
badly in Bengali
- খারাপভাবে, মন্দভাবে, অত্যন্ত, অন্যায়রূপে, অপকৃষ্টভাবে, মন্দরূপে
badly in Malayalam
- മോശമായി
badly in Kannada
- ಕೆಟ್ಟದಾಗಿ
More languagesFewer languages
- badly in Punjabi
- ਬੁਰੀ ਤਰ੍ਹਾਂ
- badly in Sanskrit
- दुष्कृत dúṣkṛta
- badly in Pashto
- بد bad
Examples of badly in a sentence
- I feel badly about the accident because it was entirely our fault.
- Everything went badly wrong.
- You can eat badly and feel crapola or eat healthily and feel great.2005, Cathy Hopkins, The Mates, Dates Guide to Life, Love, and Looking Luscious:
- The task was made trebly difficult, however, by the badly run-down condition in which the railways of Britain had been unavoidably left at the end of the war in 1945, […].1958 January, 'Borderer', “Ten Years of British Railways”, in Railway Magazine, page 12:
- In late 1970, Labour assumed the shadow posts, having lost badly (and unforeseenly) in the summer General Election.2008, Darl Larsen, Monty Python's Flying Circus, page 276:
Synonyms of badly
19 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Antonyms
Forms of badly
| Adverb | |
|---|---|
| comparative | worse |
| superlative | worst |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | more badly |
| superlative | most badly |
Origin of badly
From Middle English badly, baddely, baddeliche, equivalent to bad + -ly.
Words formed from badly
Phrases with badly
Words that rhyme with badly
Questions about badly
- What does badly mean?
- Badly means in a bad manner.
- What is badly in Tamil?
- Badly in Tamil is மோசமாக. See Badly meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use badly in a sentence?
- I feel badly about the accident because it was entirely our fault.
- What part of speech is badly?
- Badly can be an adverb or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce badly?
- Badly is pronounced /ˈbæd.li/.
Words near badly in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: badly (page history and authors); badly (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); badly (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); badly (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); badly (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); badly (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); दुष्कृत (Sanskrit) (page history and authors); بد (Pashto) (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.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-badly.ogg.
Cite this entry: “badly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/badly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.