Word.ws English Dictionary

worst-case

worst-case adjective: in the least favorable of all possible circumstances.

Adjective

worst-case (not comparable)

  1. In the least favorable of all possible circumstances.
    • In a worst-case scenario, according to the ILO, 51 million jobs could be lost in 2009.
    • In the summer, the RSSB calculated that passengers stood a 1-in-11,000 chance of catching COVID-19 on a train - a statistic it felt was actually a worst-case figure, with the risk probably even lower.2020 November 18, Paul Clifton, “We have always cleaned trains. Now, we are sanitising them”, in Rail, pages 32–33

Antonyms of worst-case

Words formed from worst-case

Phrases with worst-case

Questions about worst-case

What does worst-case mean?
Worst-case means in the least favorable of all possible circumstances.
What part of speech is worst-case?
Worst-case is an adjective.

Words near worst-case in the dictionary

  1. worst for wear
  2. Worst Korea
  3. worst of both worlds
  4. worst off
  5. worst timeline
  6. worst-case
  7. worst-case scenario
  8. worst-case scenarios
  9. worst-kept secret
  10. worst-kept secrets
  11. worst-tempered

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: worst-case (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: “worst-case.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/worst-case. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.