Word.ws English Dictionary

raté

Syllables: ra·té/ˈɹæ.teɪ/

raté noun: an unsuccessful person; a failure.

Noun

raté (plural ratés)

  1. an unsuccessful person; a failure
    • We seem to assist at the terrible soirées where the ratés exhibit their talents (M. Moronval is of course a raté) [...]1970 [1888], Henry James, chapter VII, in Partial Portraits, University of Michigan Press, page 230
    • Certainly he was a raté, as I’ve heard many declare since his death, but he was a lucid and conscious raté, one who had deliberately chosen this condition.1968, John Raymond, chapter 7, in Simenon in court, Hamish Hammond, page 152

Adjective

raté (not comparable)

  1. (postpositional) (of a person or thing) failed; disappointing
    • This was nostalgia on the part of an artist raté; in fact, Die Weltbühne was as full of politics and economics in 1926 as it was six years later.1968, István Deák, chapter II, in Weimar Germany's left-wing intellectuals: A political history of the Weltbühne and its circle, University of California Press, page 60
    • We were already notorious — the British honeymoon couple whose marriage was raté before it had begun, the husband who went raving on the beach at night to expiate some terrible shame.1993 [1992], Julian More, chapter 3, in More about France: A sentimental journey, Pan Books Limited, page 40

Forms of raté

pluralratés

Origin of raté

Borrowed from French raté, past participle form of rater (“to miss; to fail”).

Words that rhyme with raté

Questions about raté

What does raté mean?
Raté means an unsuccessful person; a failure.
What part of speech is raté?
Raté can be a noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce raté?
Raté is pronounced /ˈɹæ.teɪ/.
What is the plural of raté?
The plural of raté is ratés.

Words near raté in the dictionary

  1. Ratzburg
  2. Ratzinger
  3. Ratzingerian
  4. Ratzlaff
  5. Ratzlaffs
  6. raté
  7. ratée
  8. Rau
  9. raubasine
  10. raucaffrinoline
  11. Raucci

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: raté (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Pvanp7-raté.wav.

Cite this entry: “raté.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rat%C3%A9. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.