better

UK[ˈbɛtʰ.ə]

adjectiveA14 meanings One of the most common words in English · #50 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: bettered, bettering

Better means more good — higher quality, more skill, more health. A better phone, a better singer, feeling better after a day in bed.

It is the comparative of good and of well at the same time, so it covers both quality and manner: this bread is better, and she sings better than she did. As a verb, to better something is to beat it — nobody has bettered that time in twenty years — and to better yourself is to improve your position in life. Had better is the one to get right: it means you should, with a warning behind it, and the had stays in careful writing (you had better call her). Take the comparison word seriously too — better than, never better as. And better off means in a stronger position, money most of the time.

Definitions of better

1adjectivebetterOf higher quality, skill or value than something else.A1~43%
“The second flat was smaller but in a better street.”
2adjectivehealthierHealthier than before; recovered from illness.A2~2%
“She was better by Friday and back at work.”
3adverbeffectiveIn a way that is more effective or more skilful.A2~53%
“He plays better when nobody is watching.”
4verbalreadyTo do better than something already achieved.C1~2%
“No one has bettered that time in twenty years.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 18 sentences found in the wild and placed 18 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Phrases it lives in

had better — should, with a warning behind it
better off — in a stronger position, especially with money
think better of it — change your mind and decide not to do it
for better or worse — whatever the result turns out to be

Where it comes from

Better has no family link to good whatever. Good stops at good; better and best grew out of a different root, Proto-Indo-European *bʰed-, meaning good, which gave Proto-Germanic *batizô and Old English betera. German besser, Swedish bättre and Danish bedre come from the same place — the whole Germanic family patched the same gap the same way.

Proto-Indo-European
*bʰed-rós
Proto-Germanic
*batizô — better
Proto-West Germanic
*batiʀō
Old English
betera — better
Middle English
better
English, today
better

Built from

*bʰed- · Proto-Indo-European — good

From Middle English better, bettre, betre, from Old English betera (“better”), from Proto-West Germanic batiʀō, from Proto-Germanic batizô (“better”), from Proto-Indo-European bʰed-rós, from bʰed- (“good”). Cognate with Dutch beter, German besser, Danish and Norwegian Bokmål bedre, Norwegian Nynorsk betre, Swedish bättre, Faroese and Icelandic betri. Also Sanskrit भ॒द्र (“blessed; fortunate; happy; good”) (from bʰn̥d-ró-s). Related to best and battle (“getting better; improving; fruitful; fertile”). Compare also Icelandic batna (“to improve”), bót (“improvement”), German besser. More at batten, boot. بهتر.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Colors, Shapes & Numbers

Practise this word

better in the wild

Typically, national secondary roads are of a similar standard or higher than regional roads although some are of lower quality than the better sections of regional roads.
National secondary road
Prior to its introduction, the general perception was that higher quality requires higher costs, either by buying better materials or machines or by hiring more labor.
Quality costs
In addition, some wideband codecs may use a higher audio bit depth of 16 bits to encode samples, also resulting in much better voice quality.
Wideband audio
Carroll that allowed a better description of this taxon.
Heleosuchus
At one point, Google publicly asked for data points to help detect scrapers better.
Google Panda

1 / 4

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the betera family

better

better — used about once every 4 pages · #50 · point at the bar for the others

Definitions of better

1adjectivebetterOf higher quality, skill or value than something else.A1~43%

“The second flat was smaller but in a better street.”

2adjectivehealthierHealthier than before; recovered from illness.A2~2%

“She was better by Friday and back at work.”

3adverbeffectiveIn a way that is more effective or more skilful.A2~53%

“He plays better when nobody is watching.”

4verbalreadyTo do better than something already achieved.C1~2%

“No one has bettered that time in twenty years.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 18 sentences found in the wild and placed 18 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.