the worst is yet to come
- idiom
:
lo peor está por venir
- Despite the recent improvements, experts warn that the worst is yet to come in this ongoing crisis.
It's actually potentially just the calm before the storm and that the worst is yet to come.
- It's actually potentially just the calm before the storm and that the worst is yet to come.
Examples
-
After hearing the news about the layoffs, she wondered if the worst is yet to come for the company.
-
And so the thesis that the worst is yet to come really relies on some form of massive Black Swan coming through.
-
Many are concerned that the worst is yet to come as climate change impacts continue to worsen.
Synonyms
4
4.3
A situation very likely to cause serious trouble
How Bad
144
7.0
∞
2.0
49
3.9
57
3.2
Surface Forms
Morphology
the + worst + be + yet + to + come
The meaning is directly compositional: 'worst' = the most undesirable outcome and 'yet to come' = will happen in the future, so together they convey that an even worse outcome may occur later. This is a common, transparent temporal + superlative construction found across languages and should be understandable to a B1 learner who knows the constituent words.
Etymology
The phrase the worst is yet to come may come from the image of a storm: after some rain, darker clouds show the worst is yet to come. So it now means that even though bad things have happened, 'more serious problems may happen'.