Can "pobre" be used in the phrase "poor choice"?

Question

Context:In one of my crosswords, I have the sentence, "A ----- choice can be disastrous", where I used poor with the Spanish translation "pobre".

Q1: Can "pobre" be used in the phrase "poor choice" or is "pobre" only for financial status or in a pitiful state?

Would "mala elección" be a better Spanish translation for "poor choice"?

Muchas gracias!

Thanks for researching this one, Bandita. Very helpful. - katydew, May 31, 2013

Answer 1

Well I'm not a native speaker I'm afraid but I'd go with mala elección and I don't think I've ever seen or heard pobre used like that.

Exactly, MC, "pobre" doesn´t work in this context - 005faa61, May 31, 2013

thanks for the confirmation JC :) - Kiwi-Girl, May 31, 2013

Answer 2

I see that word order makes a big difference with this adjective.

I looked in the grammar section of this site and see that:

Pobre before noun = unfortunate

Pobre after noun = poor (financially)

Thanks Katy for bringing this to our attention. I'll link this on the crossword! - bandit51jd, May 31, 2013