Word.ws English Dictionary

fifth-rate

fifth-rate adjective: of a Royal Navy warship in the Napoleonic Era: having 32–44 guns across one or two gun decks, a complement of 200–300, and weighing 700–1,450 tons burthen.

Adjective

fifth-rate (not comparable)

  1. (UK, historical) Of a Royal Navy warship in the Napoleonic Era: having 32–44 guns across one or two gun decks, a complement of 200–300, and weighing 700–1,450 tons burthen.
    • [A] great and ſtout Fleet before the Texel (and not as much as one of our Fourth or Fifth Rate-Frigats could follow them)[.]1677, Andrew Yarranton, England's improvement by sea and land, London: R. Everingham, page 96
  2. (idiomatic, uncommon) Terrible, awful; less than fourth-rate.

Noun

fifth-rate (plural fifth-rates)

  1. (UK, historical) A fifth-rate warship.

Synonyms of fifth-rate

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Forms of fifth-rate

Adjective
alternative formfifth rate
Noun
pluralfifth-rates

Questions about fifth-rate

What does fifth-rate mean?
Fifth-rate means of a Royal Navy warship in the Napoleonic Era: having 32–44 guns across one or two gun decks, a complement of 200–300, and weighing 700–1,450 tons burthen.
What part of speech is fifth-rate?
Fifth-rate can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near fifth-rate in the dictionary

  1. fifth walls
  2. fifth wheel
  3. fifth wheels
  4. Fifth World
  5. fifth-day fits
  6. fifth-rate
  7. fifth-rates
  8. fifthed
  9. fifthhand
  10. fifthing
  11. fifthly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fifth-rate (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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