Word.ws English Dictionary

rank-and-file

rank-and-file adjective: belonging or pertaining to the rank and file. Also the alternative form of rank and file.

Adjective

rank-and-file (not comparable)

  1. Belonging or pertaining to the rank and file.
    • The morale of the rank-and-file Highland railwaymen has remained remarkably high, in view of the extent to which the London press and many an English M.P. have already discarded their railways.1962 September, G. Freeman Allen, “The New Look in Scotland's Northern Division—1”, in Modern Railways, page 164
    • Rank-and-file progressives don’t usually think of the immigration policies they support—expanding refugee quotas, easing restrictions on some classes of immigrants, and ending family separation—as an endorsement of detention, deportation, and racialized terror.2019 July 15, Greg Afinogenov, “The Jewish Case for Open Borders”, in Jewish Currents, number Summer 2019

Also used as

rank-and-file is also the alternative form of rank and file.

Questions about rank-and-file

What does rank-and-file mean?
Rank-and-file means belonging or pertaining to the rank and file.
What part of speech is rank-and-file?
Rank-and-file is an adjective.

Words near rank-and-file in the dictionary

  1. rank of apparition
  2. rank outsider
  3. rank outsiders
  4. rank sum
  5. rank'd
  6. rank-and-file
  7. rank-and-filer
  8. rank-and-filers
  9. rank-deficient
  10. rank-nullity theorem
  11. rankability

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rank-and-file (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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