Word.ws English Dictionary

worse off

worse off is the comparative form of badly off.

Meaning of badly off

Adjective

badly off (comparative worse off or more badly off, superlative worst off or most badly off)

  1. In unfortunate circumstances, especially having financial difficulty.
    • The animals were not badly off throughout that summer, in spite of the hardness of their work.1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Animal Farm […], London: Secker & Warburg, published May 1962, →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    poor

Antonyms of worse off

Forms of worse off

alternative formworse-off

Questions about worse off

What is worse off the comparative form of?
Worse off is the comparative form of badly off.

Words near worse off in the dictionary

  1. worse comes to worst
  2. worse for liquor
  3. worse for ware
  4. worse for wear
  5. worse luck
  6. worse off
  7. worse things happen at sea
  8. worse-case
  9. worse-case scenario
  10. worse-off
  11. worse-tempered

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: worse off (page history and authors); badly off (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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Cite this entry: “worse off.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/worse_off. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.