Jump To:

• feel-bad
  feel-bad

  adjective

  intended to make one feel unhappy, depressed, or dissatisfied, often to arouse one’s conscience or understanding.
• feel bad
  feel bad

  Also, feel bad about. Experience regret, sadness, embarrassment, or a similar unpleasant emotion. For example, I feel bad about not attending the funeral, or The teacher's scolding made Bobby feel bad. [First half of 1800s]

feel-bad

American  

[feel-bad] / ˈfilˈbæd /

adjective

Informal.

1. intended to make one feel unhappy, depressed, or dissatisfied, often to arouse one’s conscience or understanding.

   a feel-bad documentary about Nagasaki;

   feel-bad financial reports.

---

feel bad Idioms  

1. Also, feel bad about. Experience regret, sadness, embarrassment, or a similar unpleasant emotion. For example, I feel bad about not attending the funeral, or The teacher's scolding made Bobby feel bad. [First half of 1800s]

---

Etymology

Origin of feel-bad

First recorded in 1980–85; feel ( def. ) + bad ¹ ( def. ) on the model of feel-good ( def. )

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

feel-bad feel bad

I'm sure that has contributed to the general atmosphere of doom and gloom that seems to define this feel-bad era.

From Salon ● Apr. 12, 2024

It’s a feel-good movie for a feel-bad era.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 25, 2022

Let’s not mince words: The Tomorrow War is the feel-bad movie of the year.

From Slate ● Jul. 15, 2021

Which made it a bespoke fit for Lemonada Media, a podcast network founded in 2019 that creates feel-good stories about feel-bad issues.

From New York Times ● May 20, 2021

They are the feel-bad hits of the summer.

From The Guardian ● Jun. 19, 2019

When chatbots constantly tell people how great they are, they start to expect kudos in human interactions, too—and feel bad when they don’t get them, Turkle says.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 16, 2026

The point of the test is not to make us feel bad about our financial knowledge, but to help improve our financial outcomes.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 8, 2026

"I feel bad missing lessons all those days while pupils in other schools are still in class," she tells the BBC.

From BBC ● Jul. 4, 2026

“We don’t feel bad at all,” McAfee told me about the entire episode.

From Salon ● Jun. 22, 2026

It always made me feel bad, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

From "Summer of the Monkeys" by Wilson Rawls