worse: in a lower or more damaged condition than whatever it is being measured against
This is the word Greek uses to say "worse". It is the step up in degree from the ordinary word for "bad" (κακός), much the way English says "worse" instead of "badder". So it never simply describes a thing on its own. It always sets one thing beside another and says the second one is lower, whether the other thing is named out loud ("worse than an unbeliever") or just understood from the story.
What is being compared changes with the setting, and the word takes it all in stride:
- a tear in a cloak that ends up bigger than the hole it was meant to patch
- a sick woman who only goes downhill under her doctors
- a person whose condition at the end is lower than it was at the start
- a punishment heavier than one already spoken of
Twice the word stands by itself with no noun attached, in a fixed phrase that means roughly "downhill". Mark uses it of a woman whose health kept sliding, and 2 Timothy of frauds who keep sliding further into deceit. Nothing has to be named in that phrase; the direction of travel is the whole point.
Notice that the word does not itself say what makes something bad. In the story of the unclean spirit that comes back, the seven spirits it brings are called more evil (πονηρός), and only then is the man's final state called worse. The moral verdict comes from that other word. This one simply registers that the second condition sits below the first.