Word.ws English Dictionary

so far so bad

so far so bad proverb: up to this point, everything has gone badly.

Proverb

so far so bad

  1. (humorous) Up to this point, everything has gone badly.
    • Still farther to darken the prospects of the North, there is the financial pressure,-extreme alarming, and continually growing more burdensome and severe.
      So far, so bad; but there are important items to be taken into account on the other side.1863, The London Quarterly & Holborn Review, Epworth Press, →OCLC, page 233

Forms of so far so bad

alternative formso far, so bad

Origin of so far so bad

Modeled after so far so good.

Questions about so far so bad

What does so far so bad mean?
So far so bad means up to this point, everything has gone badly.
What part of speech is so far so bad?
So far so bad is a proverb.

Words near so far so bad in the dictionary

  1. so called
  2. so crazy it just might work
  3. so crazy it might just work
  4. so far
  5. so far as
  6. so far so bad
  7. so far so good
  8. so help me
  9. so help me Bob
  10. so help me cat
  11. so help me God

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: so far so bad (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-so far so bad.wav.

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