"It's not bad, but it's still pretty bad" is a phrase I can see myself saying. Not sure about the other way round - doesn't really work for me, but to each their own...
I have to say my bad-to-good ratio is probably:
Pretty bad
Bad
Not good
Ok <- Neutral
Not bad
Pretty good
Good
Which I now realize is a little weird to have "ok" be neutral, with not bad/good on either side of it.
For me, it all depends on tone of voice, and what word is emphasized. βPretty good!β generally means better than expected. βPretty goodβ is like βGood, butβ¦β
Neither, really. I use it to mean "more than expected". Like, if my kids insist I watch a cartoon with them, and I enjoy it, i'd say it's "pretty good". Or if a coworker said something awful about a customer, I might say the comment was "pretty mean".
Ha, exactly.
Not many options for a little less than good without people getting offended.
"Kinda good" or "almost good" definitely would upset people.
I'm British
Therefore it ranges from "utter fucking shite but I'll say it a different way" to "moderately utter bollocks but bearable" right up to "yeah it's alright"
Generally better, but it's contextual. Someone saying with a surprised tone "It was pretty good" implies that it's better than good and better than expected, and that the person might not have expected it to be good. Someone saying with a muted or dull "It was good..." would be worse than "pretty good" and implies that it was acceptable but disappointing or mediocre.
I think for me it's generally the same but I'm not a native English speaker so idk lol
"Hey that was actually a pretty good performance for a beginner!" vs. "Well that was also pretty good..."
I think I use 'pretty good' to pretend I have an opinion about something, rather than it being a moral judgement:
How was the film? Pretty good vs.
How was the film? Good.
I think it depends on what expectations were.
You and your friends make a horror movie and it's better than you thought: Hey, that's pretty good.
Steven Spielberg makes a mediocre horror movie: It was pretty good.
Intonation can carry the meaning.
In the UK, pretty good can mean anything from "not as bad as I thought it would be" to just "OK" or "pretty good! :D"
It would totally depend on my enthusiasm. More often, though, it means worse.
Worse: "Yeah, it's pretty good. But..." <- Talking about a game or a movie
Better: "Whoa! This is pretty good!" <- Food!
I can't imagine how "pretty good" could mean "better than good." Most of the examples posted here are talking about how something relates to your expectations, but that's not the question. Yes, "pretty good" is often used to describe something that is better than expected, but that doesn't make it better than "good."
For example, it doesn't make sense to say "$50 is good, but $100 is pretty good!"
I do think "pretty good" is often used as an understated way to say that something is very good, e.g. "Yeah, Messi is pretty good at soccer." However, that's a play on the actual meaning of the phrase, and should not be construed as the actual meaning.
I see βpretty goodβ to be better than just βgoodβ. It seems obvious to me, considering one is only good but the other is pretty good.
Good
Pretty good
Really/Very good
Extremely good
Great
Pretty great
Really/very great
Extremely great
Awesome
...
Yea for me "pretty good" is an estimate around good. Like using -ish. I don't want to say it was good but it was around good.