Word.ws English Dictionary

comes off second best

comes off second best is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 comes off second best

What is comes off second best the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Comes off second best is the third-person singular simple present indicative of come off second best.

Words near comes off second best in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: comes 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.

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