Word.ws English Dictionary

less than stellar

less than stellar is the alternative form of less-than-stellar.

Meaning of less-than-stellar

Adjective

less-than-stellar (comparative form only)

  1. (comparative-only, sarcastic, slang) Mediocre; not satisfactory; not very good, poor; not meeting standards or expectations.
    • Some years ago there were hundreds of musicians of ability, but of less stellar renown, who toured the country, giving performances at less than stellar fees.1931, Music and Dance, volume 21, Melbourne, Vic.: Australian Musical News Pub. Co., →OCLC, page 27, column 2

Questions about less than stellar

What is less than stellar the alternative form of?
Less than stellar is the alternative form of less-than-stellar.

Words near less than stellar in the dictionary

  1. less known
  2. less so
  3. less than
  4. less than no time
  5. less than nothing
  6. less than stellar
  7. less than three
  8. less than threed
  9. less than threeing
  10. less than threes
  11. less than truckload

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: less than stellar (page history and authors); less-than-stellar (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: “less than stellar.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/less_than_stellar. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.