Second-rate

adj, noun

adj, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A second-rate ship of the line. UK, historical
Adjective
  1. 1
    Of a Royal Navy ship of the line in the Napoleonic Era: having 80–98 guns across three gun decks, a complement of 700–750, and weighing approximately 2,200 tons burthen. UK, historical, not-comparable
  2. 2
    Of mediocre quality; not first-rate. idiomatic, not-comparable

    "‘Revelation’, to a philosopher such as Plotinus, was not merely irrational: it led to second-rate counterfeits of traditional academic philosophical culture. It was as if the inhabitants of an underdeveloped country were to seek to catch up with western technology by claiming to have learnt nuclear physics through dreams and oracles."

Adjective
  1. 1
    moderate to inferior in quality wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
amateurc-gradecheapcoarsecommoncut-rate

Example

More examples

"It is at best a second-rate hotel."

Related phrases

second-rater

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.