worse for wear
worse for wear adjective: in poor physical condition due to long or heavy use.
Adjective
worse for wear
- In poor physical condition due to long or heavy use.
- However, before Zoe could open the first cage, Burt’s van, looking decidedly the worse for wear, came thundering into the warehouse, smashing the huge metal sliding door into the air as it did so2012, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], Ratburger, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN
- Synonyms:
- broken-down, worn-out, deteriorated, clapped out, damaged, defective, dilapidated, effete, faulty, munted
- Drunk.
Synonyms of worse for wear
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
- passé
- past it
- past one's prime
- raddled
- ragged
- ravaged
- rinky-dink
- rough
- shabby
- stale
- tired
- unimproved
- wasted
- weakened
- wrecked
- wrecksome
- worn
- worsened
- worse for liquor
- Adrian Quist
- adrip
- aled up
- all mops and brooms
- arseholed
- a sheet in the wind
- a sheet in the wind's eye
- bedrunken
- befuddled
- beliquored
- besotted
Forms of worse for wear
| alternative misspelling | worst for wear |
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Questions about worse for wear
- What does worse for wear mean?
- Worse for wear means in poor physical condition due to long or heavy use.
- What part of speech is worse for wear?
- Worse for wear is an adjective.
Words near worse for wear in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: worse for wear (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-worse for wear.ogg.
Cite this entry: “worse for wear.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/worse_for_wear. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.