Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Worst

Are the following sentences proper and correct?

“The weather is getting worst.” “The ten best clients and the ten worst clients.”

My wife insists that it should be worse and not worst.

Thanks.

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Comments

Is this sentence correct? "it will just make the situation alot worst"

bunny Mar-10-2009

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I have a question. Now if I were to refer to an evil world leader, more specifically the most evil, would I say the 'best' evil leader or would it be the 'worst' evil leader?

Kyle1 Nov-05-2006

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It may help to experimentally substitute "better" and "best" into the sentence to see which makes more sense. If "better" sounds better, then you would use "worse;" if "best" sounds like the right fit, then use "worst."

speedwell2 Feb-28-2005

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Yes, the second "sentence" may be a fragment, but that isn't what Ted really wanted to know.

Ted, "worst" is the opposite of "best," so despite the fragmentary nature of your second example, the usage of "worst" is correct. They are both superlatives (think about other similar words that end in -est, such as "prettiest" and "highest").

But when describing something that has gotten more undesirable in some way, the correct word is "worse."

Examples:

"My son used to just steal beer from the refrigerator, but now he has become hooked on drugs. I have had the worst time dealing with him. He has gone from bad to worse."

"My boss insults customers, golfs on work time, and lies on his expense account. But worst of all, he cooks the books. I have never had a worse boss."

speedwell2 Feb-28-2005

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It's still a sentence fragment. Fragments are correct in many, many cases, but a fragment isn't technically a sentence.

Persephone_Imytholin Feb-27-2005

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How can you say the second sentence isn't correct?
- Who are coming to the meeting?
- The ten best clients and the ten worst clients.

slemmet1 Feb-26-2005

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Weather gets the comparitive degree - "The weather is getting worse". 'Worst' is appropriate if you say, frex, "The weather is at its worst".

The second sentence isn't correct. It's a sentence fragment, and screams for a verb to help it along. The use of 'worst' is correct - "Our ten best and ten worst clients came by the office today". To use 'worse', then it'd need to be a slightly more awkward sentence like "Ten of our better and ten of our worse clients paid their accounts last week".

Persephone_Imytholin Feb-26-2005

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