The words ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are simple ways of expressing how we feel about something. However, they’re also overused, which means they can lack impact. So to make your writing more powerful and descriptive, you might need a few of the synonyms for ‘good’ and ‘bad’ detailed below.
‘Good’ is a word with many uses, including as a noun and an adjective. We’ll focus on the adjectival uses here, where its basic meaning is ‘desirable’ or ‘of a high standard’. However, even then ‘good’ has several uses, so the best alternative will depend on what you are trying to say. Some common senses of ‘good’ and suitable synonyms can be found below, for example:
Definition
Example
Synonyms
Acceptable in quality or degree
Adequate, fair, satisfactory, sufficient
High quality or desirable
Useful or beneficial
Morally good or agreeable
Skilled or capable
Pleasant or pleasing
As the table above shows, the way to pick a ‘good’ (i.e. acceptable) synonym is to know what you are trying to say. This will often lead you to a more descriptive alternative. It is therefore important to check the definition of synonyms for ‘good’ to make sure they fit the situations.
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We say something is ‘bad’ to express a negative opinion. It is thus the opposite of good in all of its senses. And as with ‘good’, we have several options for how to use this word, including:
Low quality or faulty
Of a very low quality
Harmful or negative
Immoral or disagreeable
Unpleasant or unwelcome
There are other uses of ‘bad’ not described here, such as when we describe an injured body part (e.g. a ‘bad back’) or rotten food (e.g. ‘bad meat’). And as with ‘good’ above, this range of meanings shows that it’s important to check the definition of synonyms for ‘bad’ before you use them.
It’s fine to use words like ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in academic writing, but they’re not usually enough by themselves. This is because they’re evaluative rather than descriptive. For example, if we were writing about management techniques, we might say that ‘unpaid overtime is bad for staff morale’. That is an evaluation because we say it is ‘bad’. But to demonstrate our understanding, we’d also need to explain why it is bad and how we reached that conclusion.
The answer here, then, is to remember that academic writing involves explaining our judgements. And the same applies to using words like ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in other forms of critical writing.
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