badly

comparative worse · superlative worst

1. In a bad manner.

   Don't think badly of me: give me the benefit of the doubt.

   3 more examples

   Things are going badly for her: she did badly in her exams owing to a badly designed studying schedule.

   I feel badly about the accident because it was entirely our fault.

   You can eat badly and feel crapola or eat healthily and feel great. The choice is yours...

   2005, Cathy Hopkins, The Mates, Dates Guide to Life, Love, and Looking Luscious

   Synonyms: lousily, meagerly, poorly, shoddily · Antonyms: well

2. Very much; to a great degree.

   I want it so badly.

   4 more examples

   Look at these split ends! You badly need a haircut!

   Everything went badly wrong.

   The task was made trebly difficult, however, by the badly run-down condition in which the railways of Britain had been unavoidably left at the end of the war in 1945, […].

   1958 January 28, 'Borderer', “Ten Years of British Railways”, in Railway Magazine, page 12

   In late 1970, Labour assumed the shadow posts, having lost badly (and unforeseenly) in the summer General Election.

   2008, Darl Larsen, Monty Python's Flying Circus, page 276

   Synonyms: acutely, very much, acutely, awfully, almighty, seriously, impossibly, beyond

comparative more badly · superlative most badly

1. Northern EnglandIll, unwell.

   He's never badly.