Suboptimal

//sʌbˈɑptɪməl// adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Worse than optimal; of less than the highest standard or quality. not-comparable

    "Near-synonym: submaximal"

Example

More examples

"English is a language that is really suboptimal, but there are volumes of information in it."

Etymology

From sub- + optimal.

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