Word.ws English Dictionary

came off second best

came off second best is the simple past of come off second best.

Meaning of come off second best

Verb

come off second best (third-person singular simple present comes off second best, present participle coming off second best, simple past came off second best, past participle come off second best)

  1. To be defeated in competition; be on the losing side.
    • He was elected to the chair of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy in 1827 at the newly-founded London University, and became prominent in railway controversies in the 'thirties, when he came off second best in a dispute with Daniel Gooch about the effects of speed on the human frame.1950 March, Michael Robbins, “Dr. Lardner's "Railway Economy"”, in Railway Magazine, page 153

Questions about came off second best

What is came off second best the simple past of?
Came off second best is the simple past of come off second best.

Words near came off second best in the dictionary

  1. came naturally
  2. came of
  3. came of age
  4. came off
  5. came off it
  6. came off second best
  7. came on
  8. came on over
  9. came on strong
  10. came on to
  11. came one's way

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: came off second best (page history and authors); come off second best (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “came off second best.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/came_off_second_best. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.