A note about words I personally hate so stop using them, alright??

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

219. You are correct that people mix up worse and worst.

Last edited Tue Oct 22, 2013, 03:32 AM - Edit history (1)

I hope you won't mind, however, if I point out that even worst is not correct, and that worse case scenario could be correct.

As you know, one thing is correctly said to be worse than another. When two things are being compared, we use the comparative not the superlative.

Positive Comparative Superlative
good____better_______best
bad_____worse_______worst

Following than with worst seems never to be correct. (Google worse than, then google worst than.)

Worst comes in when we compare more than two things.
"That was the worst meal I've ever eaten."

Now, it might seem that, "That meal was worst than all of the other meals I've ever eaten," is correct because we're comparing more than two things. But, in fact, we are comparing just two--this meal and the group of all the other meals. So, "This meal is worse than those other meals," would be correct.

However, "This is the worst of all the meals I've ever eaten," is correct because we are comparing all of the meals we've eaten to one another.

So, again, than is the key. To put it simply: worst than is never correct. With than, use worse.

As for worse case scenario, I'm sure we've all heard it used incorrectly. On the other hand, some of the language geeks at this link make a good case for how worse case scenario might in some cases be correct.

Well, that's way more than you bargained for, and this thread is cold so it probably won't ever even get read, but after trying hard to make this a reasonably clear explanation of a somewhat complicated point of grammar, I guess I may as well post it.