badness

I

(New American Roget's College Thesaurus)

Hurtfulness

Nouns

1. (quality of being bad) badness, hurtfulness, virulence, perniciousness, malignancy, malignity; insalubrity; ill or bad turn, evil star, ill wind; bane, pest, plague-spot, scourge; pestilence (See disease); skeleton in the closet, thorn in the side or in the flesh. Slang, bummer, bad hair day, the pits. See evil.

2. (being bad toward others) ill treatment, molestation, abuse, oppression, persecution, outrage; atrocity, torture. See malevolence.

3. (bad behavior) misbehavior, mischief, acting out; depravity, vice (See impurity); guilt; improbity, knavery.

4. bad influence, bad or evil genius. Informal, hoodoo, jinx; rotten egg. Slang, Jonah.

5. (bad quality) imperfection, defectiveness, poor quality, mediocrity, inferiority. Slang, tackiness, schlock; schlockmeister.

Verbs

1. (be bad toward) wrong, aggrieve, oppress, persecute; trample, tread, or put upon, overburden, weigh down, victimize.

2. (have a bad nature) be vicious; sin, fall, err, transgress, go astray, forget oneself; misdo, misbehave; trespass, deviate, sow one's wild oats, act up, carry on; horse, fool, monkey, play, or mess around. Informal, cut up, hack off or around.

Adjectives

1. (having a bad quality) bad, ill, untoward, as bad as can be, dreadful; horrid, horrible; rank, rotten [at or to the core], decayed, decomposed, putrid, tainted. Slang, cheesy, punk.

2. (having bad behavior) hurtful, harmful, baneful, baleful; detrimental, pernicious; mischievous, full of mischief, mischief-making, full of Old Nick or the devil; malefic, malignant, noxious, nocuous, noisome; unlucky, sinister; obnoxious; inauspicious; oppressive, burdensome, onerous; malign, malevolent; virulent, venomous, envenomed, corrosive; poisonous, toxic.

3. (of bad quality) mean, paltry; injured, deteriorated, unsatisfactory, exceptionable, indifferent; below par, inferior, imperfect; ill-contrived, ill-conditioned; ^vretched, abysmal, pitiful, pathetic, sad, grievous, deplorable, lamentable; pitiable; unfortunate (See adversity). Slang, lousy, gnarly, schlocky, hellacious, uncool, lame[-ass], piss-poor (vulgar).

4. evil, wrong; depraved, vile, base; flagrant, nefarious; reprehensible, heinous, hateful (See disapprobation); wicked, sinful. Informal, beastly, ungodly.

Adverbs — badly, amiss, awry, wrong, ill; to one's cost; where the shoe pinches.

Quotations — There is something rotten in the state of Denmark (Shakespeare), There's small choice in rotten apples (Shakespeare), There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so (Shakespeare).

Antonyms, See goodness, conduct.

II

(Roget's Thesaurus II) noun Whatever is destructive or harmful: bad, evil, ill. See HELP.