The Opposite of Perfect

Question

I am trying to assign a human readable tag that describes how good an object is. For example grading a student's paper:

string quality = grade_paper(string paper);

The quality has to be an alphabetical string (specifically not a number).

Before I can proceed, I need a list of qualities I can report. Here's what I have so far:

very poor, poor, fair, good, excellent, outstanding, perfect

This list seems unbalanced because perfect implies the complete absence of flaws.

Is there a single word that is the opposite of perfect? Perfectly bad just seems like a kludge.

Answer 1

You could say Unacceptable or Completely Unacceptable.

BTW, many people might consider excellent and outstanding synonyms.

Answer 2

Atrocious would seem to fit your needs

Of a very poor quality; extremely bad or unpleasant

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/atrocious

Or perhaps use what (at least) the UK School system uses, Ungradable, or grade U. It literally means no content worth grading.