Word.ws English Dictionary

come off second best

come off second best verb: to be defeated in competition; be on the losing side.

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

Forms of come off second best

third-person singular presentcomes off second best
present participlecoming off second best
pastcame off second best
past participlecome off second best

Questions about come off second best

What does come off second best mean?
Come off second best means to be defeated in competition; be on the losing side.
What part of speech is come off second best?
Come off second best is a verb.
What is the past tense of come off second best?
The past tense of come off second best is came off second best.

Words near come off second best in the dictionary

  1. come naturally
  2. come of
  3. come of age
  4. come off
  5. come off it
  6. come off second best
  7. come on
  8. come on down
  9. come on in
  10. come on over
  11. come on strong

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 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.

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