Word.ws English Dictionary

first rate

first rate is the alternative spelling of first-rate.

Meaning of first-rate

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

See all 3 meanings of first-rate

Forms of first rate

pluralfirst rates

Questions about first rate

What is first rate the alternative spelling of?
First rate is the alternative spelling of first-rate.

Words near first rate in the dictionary

  1. first principles
  2. first quarter
  3. first quarters
  4. first rain
  5. first rains
  6. first rate
  7. first rates
  8. first reader
  9. first readers
  10. first reading
  11. first readings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: first rate (page history and authors); first-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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Cite this entry: “first rate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/first_rate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.