28 Better Ways to Say “Very Bad” – Get More Vocab

You can do better than very bad. It’s a boring, imprecise term.

Here are 28 descriptive adjectives you can use instead.

terrible

,

awful

,

horrible

You almost certainly know these words already. We use them all as substitutes for very bad. Note that the descriptive adjectives below are often better choices than terrible, awful, and horrible.

“I had a terrible day.” 

“Marcos did a horrible job on his essay.”

“The Titanic is an awful movie.”

horrendous

,

abysmal

We use horrendous and abysmal as more severe forms of terrible, horrible, and awful. If terrible, horrible, and awful mean “very bad,” then horrendous and abysmal mean “extremely bad.”

“Trust me, you don’t want me to sing. My voice is horrendous.”

“The president’s approval rating is absolutely abysmal. No one seems to like him.”

lousy

We use lousy to talk about things that are of very poor quality.

Some collocations with lousy are lousy job, lousy day, lousy idea, lousy place, lousy teacher, lousy student, lousy actor, (lousy + any profession), lousy father/mother/son/daughter/brother etc.

“I was in a lousy mood and didn’t feel like going to the game.”

“Kenneth was a lousy student in high school, but he straightened things out in college.”