Correct usage for "bad" v. "poor" adjectives

The way I was taught many years ago was that something like quality can be poor, but not bad.

The reasoning was that "bad" is a value/moral whereas poor applies to non-value qualities. In this case, evil people can be bad, but not poor (unless they have no money).

Is this still the case? I find more often that people use "bad" to describe most things that "poor" would traditionally be used for.

• Poor

  • This burger was really ____ quality.
  • Wow, that chair is of ____ craftsmanship.
  • Johnson handled the account ____ly, so we lost it.
  • He drives so ____ly, it is a wonder how he ever passed his test in the first place.

• Bad

  • That barking dog is ____.
  • The ____ boy broke my window.
  • No one can dispute that Hitler was a ____ man.

So what about where things are less clear-cut? What's the rule of thumb?

• Wow, that's a really ____ computer you have.
• My S.O. always treats me ____ly when I forget to take out the trash.
• I hate that garage! The mechanic always does a ____ job!

Solution 1:

Like many prescriptive rules of its type, this dichotomy was never actually the tradition.

In reality, bad has always been used as a synonym for this sense of poor. (In fact, bad began to be used this way slightly before it was ever used in the moral sense!)

• According to the OED, the first citation of bad in the moral/value sense dates back to only 1325.
• Bad in the sense of "not of the expected or requisite quality; poor, worthless; deficient, inferior; of a low standard, below par" dates back to 1276. This is cited throughout the centuries and into the present day. It has had a healthy existence throughout Modern English.

As you can see, bad has always been a synonym of this sense of poor. At a certain point in time, some prescriptivists began to advocate for the dichotomy that you describe, but this was never actually reflected in usage.

See also: less vs. fewer.

So, there is nothing wrong with using bad in any of the cases that you have listed here with poor, though one might aesthetically sound better than another for a given sentence.

Solution 2:

The usage of bad eclipses poor. I still personally keep the distinction because I find the nuances helpful. My local dictionary includes these relevant definitions which suggests that bad has more than extended beyond morality:

poor — worse than is usual, expected, or desirable; of a low or inferior standard or quality

bad — of poor quality; inferior or defective

bad — (of a person) not able to do something well; incompetent

bad — morally depraved; wicked

bad — worthless; not valid

There were even more; I just picked the ones I thought most relevant.