adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A sixth-rate warship. UK, historical

Adjective

1. 1
   Of a Royal Navy warship in the Napoleonic Era: having 20–28 guns on one gun deck, a complement of 140–200, and weighing 340–550 tons burthen. UK, historical, not-comparable

   "The Navy classified warships by their number of cannons, and with twenty-eight, she was a sixth-rate–the lowest rank."

2. 2
   Terrible, awful; less than fifth-rate. idiomatic, not-comparable, uncommon

Example

More examples

"The Navy classified warships by their number of cannons, and with twenty-eight, she was a sixth-rate–the lowest rank."

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