Word.ws English Dictionary

coming off second best

coming off second best is the present participle and gerund 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 coming off second best

What is coming off second best the present participle and gerund of?
Coming off second best is the present participle and gerund of come off second best.

Words near coming off second best in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: coming 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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