Word.ws English Dictionary

first-rate

first-rate adjective: of a Royal Navy ship of the line in the Napoleonic Era: having at least 100 guns across three gun decks, a complement of 850–875, and weighing approximately 2,500 tons burthen.

Adjective

first-rate (not comparable)

  1. (UK, historical) Of a Royal Navy ship of the line in the Napoleonic Era: having at least 100 guns across three gun decks, a complement of 850–875, and weighing approximately 2,500 tons burthen.
  2. (idiomatic) Superb, exceptional; of the best sort; very high quality.
    • Our only first-rate body of contemporary poetry is the German.1867, Matthew Arnold, On the Study of Celtic Literature
    • He used to drop into my chambers once in a while to smoke, and was first-rate company. When I gave a dinner there was generally a cover laid for him. I liked the man for his own sake, and even had he promised to turn out a celebrity it would have had no weight with me.1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC, page 2

Noun

first-rate (plural first-rates)

  1. (UK, historical) A first-rate ship of the line.

first-rate meaning in Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada

first-rate in Tamil

முதல்தரம்

first-rate in Malayalam

first-rate; top-tier; premium; superior in quality or rank
ഒന്നാം കിട onnāṁ kiṭa

first-rate in Kannada

ಪ್ರಥಮ ದರ್ಜೆಯ, ಅತ್ಯುತ್ಕೃಷ್ಟ, ಸರ್ವಶ್ರೇಷ್ಠ, ಅತ್ಯುತ್ತಮವಾದ, ಸರ್ವೋತ್ಕೃಷ್ಟ

Synonyms of first-rate

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of first-rate

Forms of first-rate

Adjective
alternative formfirst rate
Noun
pluralfirst-rates

Words formed from first-rate

Questions about first-rate

What does first-rate mean?
First-rate means of a Royal Navy ship of the line in the Napoleonic Era: having at least 100 guns across three gun decks, a complement of 850–875, and weighing approximately 2,500 tons burthen.
What is first-rate in Tamil?
First-rate in Tamil is முதல்தரம். See First-rate meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is first-rate?
First-rate can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near first-rate in the dictionary

  1. first-person shooter
  2. first-person shooters
  3. first-person singular
  4. first-person singulars
  5. first-personal
  6. first-rate
  7. first-rateness
  8. first-rater
  9. first-raters
  10. first-rates
  11. first-run

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: first-rate (page history and authors); first-rate (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ഒന്നാം കിട (Malayalam) (page history and authors); first-rate (Kannada Wiktionary) (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-first rate.ogg.

Cite this entry: “first-rate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/first-rate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.