Word.ws English Dictionary

fourth-rate

fourth-rate adjective: of a Royal Navy ship of the line in the Napoleonic Era: having 50–60 guns across two gun decks, a complement of 320–420, and weighing approximately 1,000 tons burthen.

Adjective

fourth-rate (not comparable)

  1. (UK, historical) Of a Royal Navy ship of the line in the Napoleonic Era: having 50–60 guns across two gun decks, a complement of 320–420, and weighing approximately 1,000 tons burthen.
  2. (idiomatic, uncommon) Terrible, awful; less than third-rate.

Noun

fourth-rate (plural fourth-rates)

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

Synonyms of fourth-rate

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of fourth-rate

Forms of fourth-rate

Adjective
alternative formfourth rate
Noun
pluralfourth-rates

Questions about fourth-rate

What does fourth-rate mean?
Fourth-rate means of a Royal Navy ship of the line in the Napoleonic Era: having 50–60 guns across two gun decks, a complement of 320–420, and weighing approximately 1,000 tons burthen.
What part of speech is fourth-rate?
Fourth-rate can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near fourth-rate in the dictionary

  1. fourth-degree
  2. fourth-degree burn
  3. fourth-degree burns
  4. fourth-dimensionally
  5. fourth-party logistics
  6. fourth-rate
  7. fourth-rates
  8. fourth-wall
  9. fourth-wall joke
  10. fourth-wall jokes
  11. fourth-walls

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fourth-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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