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not bad

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Not bad (at all).

 

1. [Someone or something is] quite satisfactory. Bill: How do you like your new teacher? Jane: Not bad. Bob: Is this pen okay? Bill: I guess. Yeah. Not bad.

2. [Someone or something is] really quite good. (The person or thing can be named, as in the examples.) John: How do you like that new car of yours? Mary: Not bad. Not bad at all. Tom: This one looks great to me. What do you think? Sue: It's not bad.

See also: bad, not

not bad

reasonably good Thirteen bucks - that's not bad for lunch.

Usage notes: often used in conversation: a€?How are you?a€? a€?Not bad.a€? also used in the forms not too bad, not that bad, and not so bad: It takes me about an hour to get to work, which is not that bad.

Related vocabulary: not half bad

See also: bad, not

not bad

Also, not half bad; not so or too bad ; not too shabby. Fairly good, as in Not bad, said the conductor, but we need to play the scherzo again, or The movie wasn't half bad, but Jerry wanted to go home, or Our garden's not too bad this year, or How are things going?-Not too shabby. All of the terms involving bad, which imply that something is less bad than it might be, date from the mid-1700s. The last variant, using shabby in the sense of "inferior," is slang of the late 1900s.

See also: bad, not