Submarginal

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Less than, or worse than, marginal. Not meeting even the minimum standard of quality.

    "Nutpicking, along with chicken cleaning and rag sorting, constituted the very bottom of the submarginal industries in St. Louis in the 1930s, and it was in these industries that African American women found sporadic employment."

  2. 2
    Below a margin.

Example

More examples

"Nutpicking, along with chicken cleaning and rag sorting, constituted the very bottom of the submarginal industries in St. Louis in the 1930s, and it was in these industries that African American women found sporadic employment."

Etymology

From sub- + marginal.

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