My Bad-to-Good spectrum would be:
Bad
Pretty bad
Fairly bad
Fairly good
Pretty good
Good
I would rate pretty bad as worse than bad.
“It’s not bad, but it’s still pretty bad” is a phrase I can see myself saying. Not sure about the other way round - doesn’t really work for me, but to each their own…
I see it as similar to “very bad”, which would be worse than just “bad”.
I have to say my bad-to-good ratio is probably:
Pretty bad
Bad
Not good
Ok <- Neutral
Not bad
Pretty good
Good
Which I now realize is a little weird to have “ok” be neutral, with not bad/good on either side of it.
And this?
I’d say it means goodish
Depends on tone.
Intonation can carry the meaning.
In the UK, pretty good can mean anything from “not as bad as I thought it would be” to just “OK” or “pretty good! :D”
I see “pretty good” to be better than just “good”. It seems obvious to me, considering one is only good but the other is pretty good.
Good>pretty good
The word good is a stronger affirmative imo
Better
It’s not just good, it’s good enough!
Not necessarily worse, but more ambiguous than if I say something is good.
Yea for me “pretty good” is an estimate around good. Like using -ish. I don’t want to say it was good but it was around good.
I always thought pretty good was better than good. Honestly surprised to find out I may have been wrong my entire life.
Good
Pretty good
Really/Very good
Extremely good
Great
Pretty great
Really/very great
Extremely great
Awesome
…
Worse. Sometimes just a little worse than good, sometimes it’s medium or negative but you’re just trying to be nice. “How did you like the liver and onions I cooked for you?”. “It was pretty good.”
When we say something the words have more impact than the word itself.
Pretty good is not at good as good.
