| Hi, everybody! My name is Alisha. |
| In this lesson, I'm going to talk about the "adjective bad" and I'm going to talk about some adjectives that are like leveled-up versions of the word "bad." So, I'm going to introduce a lot of adjectives that have, like deeper meanings of "bad" and I'm going to share some example sentences. |
| So first, I want to introduce the way I presented this material. So, this is what's called an adjective wheel. So, inside this wheel, this circle, there are lots of adjectives. I separated them into groups and so we're going to see how all of the groups mean similar things, but we're going to explore the small differences in meaning. |
| So, I want to start with this part of the wheel. So, at the center is the word "bad," our focus word. I want to begin with this part. We're gonna focus on these three words to begin. |
| So, from the center, the next word our is the word "decayed." This is an adjective. All of these are adjectives. And outside of "decayed, there are two more words. So here in this group, we have "decayed," "rotten," "spoiled." So, this is R-O-T-T-E-N, "rotten," but in American English, we usually pronounce it as /rotten, rotten/. "Spoiled" as pronounced as it is spelled, /spoiled/. You may also hear this word pronounced in British English and perhaps Australian English as /spoilt, spoilt/ with a T sound at the end. |
| So, "decayed," the root here is "decay" which means that something is like, is very old or maybe it's dead and it's becoming like in a worst state than originally. "Spoiled" and "rotten" share a meaning which means that something is like maybe growing mold like in your refrigerator or it's no longer safe to eat as with food. We can also use this word to talk about, like children who have had, like too much good stuff, like too much candy or too much money or too much fun. They expect too many fun things, so it's something that was maybe good before, but now is not good. So these are things that are "spoiled" or "rotten." |
| Let's look at how we use these words in sentences. You'll notice a theme here. |
| First, let's look at the word "decayed." |
| "We found a decayed animal next to the road." |
| So a "decayed animal." This means that the animal is dead and that means the body is decomposing. So "to decompose" means it's not like an animal shape anymore. The body is slowly breaking into small pieces, so it has like this really disgusting image, "a decayed animal." |
| Another word, "rotten." |
| So, in this sentence, I've used this "ew." "Ew" is a way that we express disgust casually, "ew." |
| So, "Ew, there's rotten food in your fridge." |
| So, "rotten food" means the food is not safe to eat, the food smells bad, something is rotten. "There's rotten food in your fridge." |
| And, "I think this milk is spoiled." |
| So these two words, when you're talking about food, you can use them in the same way like, "I think this milk is rotten" or "Ew, there's spoiled food in your fridge." You can use both of those in the same way. So we use this a lot to talk about food and drinks. |
| "Decay" seems… tends to sound a little more serious, like maybe it's, maybe after, like a natural disaster like a person maybe or like an animal, something that maybe sounds a little more severe, we might use "decay" for that. |
| So this is our first group in this adjective wheel. |
| Let's move on to this next part over here, these three words. |
| The words are "stressful," "unpleasant," and "troubling." |
| So, "stressful," we see inside this word is "stress," stress, so something that causes us to feel stressed is stressful. In this word, "unpleasant, we see "un-" meaning not and "pleasant." So pleasant means a good thing, something we enjoy, but "unpleasant" means not enjoyable, something we do not enjoy. And finally, "troubling," something is troubling. So "trouble" is here in this word, so that means it causes us to sense trouble. So maybe we don't feel troubled, but maybe we feel concerned or we feel worried. |
| So, let's look at how we use these words in sentences. |
| First, let's look at "stressful." |
| "Moving to a new house is so stressful." |
| So it causes us "stress." |
| Now, let's look at "unpleasant," here. |
| "That meeting was really unpleasant." |
| So, it was not enjoyable. Maybe, someone had an argument or there was a big disagreement. "That meeting was really unpleasant," so not good and causing stress as well. |
| Third, "troubling." |
| "There was troubling information in the company report." |
| So, "troubling" means like we have a sense that trouble is happening or there's some trouble somewhere. So, it's "trouble" and like "stress." It causes us stress and we sense trouble. |
| So, "troubling" and "unpleasant" are not necessarily the same thing. So, the meaning was maybe unpleasant, but it might not have been troubling. Maybe there was no sense of, like trouble or a problem. It was just not a good meeting. Maybe people were unhappy. So, these are kind of related similar adjectives, but not quite the same. |
| Okay, let's continue on to this group at the bottom of the wheel. This group here of three, the base kind of here for this group is "poor quality." So, "poor quality" means not good quality. So, for example, things that are maybe very cheap are sometimes poor quality or things that we make very quickly are poor quality. |
| The other two words in this group are the very casual "crappy." Some people might consider "crappy" a curse word, so please be careful. You might hear "crappy" or "crummy." "Crummy" is good to use if you're worried about this sounding like a swear word. Crummy is spelled C-R-U-M-M-Y, "crummy," or you might hear "cheap" also. A more polite word to use, especially at work, is "unsatisfactory." |
| So let's look at how to use these words. |
| First, "poor quality." |
| For example: |
| "My phone case is really poor quality." |
| "Is really poor quality," so that means maybe it breaks easily or it doesn't protect my phone or it scratches really easily, for example. So, "My phone case is really poor quality." |
| Let's move on then to "crappy." |
| So, "crappy," as I said, has, like a very casual meaning about it. |
| So something that's "crappy" sounds really, really low. We can also use it to describe our feelings, like I feel really crappy today. |
| Here, in my example sentence: |
| "I bought a super crappy pair of shoes online." |
| So here, I've also used the modifier "super." So "super" also indicates it's a very casual situation. So we use this word mostly among close friends and we don't use it in polite situations. So "crappy" means extremely poor quality, very low quality. |
| Finally, let's look at this word, "unsatisfactory." |
| And if we break this word down, we see the prefix here, "un-" combined with "satisfactory." The root here is the word "satisfy." So, "satisfy," to satisfy means like to be pleased with something, to be happy about something. So, this means not satisfied with something, not happy about something in relationship to quality, as well. |
| Okay, so in an example sentence: |
| "Your sales performance this quarter was unsatisfactory." |
| It was "unsatisfactory," so that means your performance was a poor quality, but that means that it's like something that we were not satisfied by, so it was not good, but this is a polite way to say, like we wish you had done better, for example. |
| Okay, so that's this bottom group here that relates to "poor quality," a poor-quality meaning. |
| Let's move on to the next group then, this group here. So, the base word in this group is "mean." |
| So "mean" is very commonly used among kids, for someone who is being unkind. Someone is unkind, we can say that person is mean. After "mean," I have these two words which are "evil" and "corrupt." So, "evil" often refers to, like characters in stories, so someone who is, we could say very bad, like the bad guy or like the villain in a story is often considered evil. So, someone who is evil is like 100% bad, so they want to do mean things or unkind things or terrible things. "Corrupt" is a bit different. "Corrupt" is used a lot in the real world to talk about real-world people and real-world situations, not just characters in stories. "Corrupt" means that someone is influenced in a negative way. So often like they're taking money or they're taking favors in exchange for a service exchanged for something. |
| So let's look at how we use these adjectives. |
| First, with "mean," a common example is something like this, kids might say… |
| "Why are you being so mean?" |
| So, why are you being so unkind? So maybe, a child would say this to, like their parents when told they can't do something. "Why are you being so mean?" |
| Here, with the use of "evil," a question: |
| "Do you think Darth Vader was truly an evil character?" |
| So "evil" means, do you really think that he was 100% bad? So, "evil" here, as I said, relates a lot to like stories and storytelling. |
| Finally, the word "corrupt," in this example sentence: |
| "Many people think politicians are corrupt." |
| So that means, again, exchanging something like money or favors in exchange for another favor, in this case, in politics. |
| So, these all kind of relate to unkindness, being unkind or being mean, as an extension of bad. |
| Okay, finally then, this last group here, these three words, the base here is "harmful," so causing harm. Here we see "-ful" at the end of harm as we saw with "stressful" here. So these words refer to causing that thing, causing stress and causing harm here. So "harmful" means something that causes us, like, to feel maybe in danger or it causes harm, as I said. |
| So within that idea, there are two adjectives. First is "dangerous." So, the root here is "danger" so something that could be, like potentially unsafe for people's health or to their body and the other word is "detrimental." So here, we have "detriment" inside this word which means like it causes a loss in some way, so it causes like a reduction of some kind, a decrease of some kind and something. |
| So, let's look at how we use these in sentences. |
| First is "harmful." |
| "Second-hand smoke is harmful to people's health." |
| So again, it causes harm, it causes damage to people's health. |
| Second is the word "dangerous." |
| In this example: |
| "Don't drive so fast, it's dangerous." |
| It's unsafe to drive so fast. |
| And finally, "detrimental." |
| "He gave a terrible speech last year. It was detrimental to his career." |
| This is a common way that we use "detrimental," so we follow "detrimental" with your preposition "to," so "detrimental to (what)." This shows us, it was detrimental, meaning it caused a loss and this part here, after the adjective, explains what like was reduced or what decreased because of this other thing. So in this case, his career kind of decreased or he, like lost maybe something good about his career. It caused damage to his career, so we use this pattern "detrimental to (something)" to explain that. |
| Okay, so that's the final group there. |
| But, this is a quick introduction to just actually a few words that mean "bad." There are a lot of more words, but you can check a thesaurus to see some more examples and to get a few more example sentences as well. So you can check out a lot more words that mean "bad," but these are some good ways, I think, to start leveling up your use of this adjective. |
| So, if you have any questions or comments or if you want to practice making an example sentence with one of these words, please feel free to do so in the comment section of this video. Thanks very much for watching this lesson and I will see you again soon. Bye-bye! |
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