Maybe I misunderstood, but it seemed to me that the smoking example was evidence for your claim: > colloquially, people say something is bad when they mean wor

Maybe I misunderstood, but it seemed to me that the smoking example was evidence for your claim: > colloquially, people say something is bad when they mean worse than the alternative [as opposed to absolutely bad] I don't think it does support that claim, for the reasons I've given.