Word.ws English Dictionary

runner up

runner up is the alternative spelling of runner-up.

Meaning of runner-up

Noun

runner-up (plural runners-up or (colloquial, nonstandard) runner-ups)

  1. The person who finishes second, or in any position after the first.
    • Remember, if the winner cannot complete the duties, the runner-up will take over.
  2. Second favourite.
    • For years, Twitter was a runner-up social media company. It never grew to the size and scale of a Facebook or an Instagram. It simply muddled along.2022 July 11, Kate Conger, Mike Isaac, “How Elon Musk Damaged Twitter and Left It Worse Off”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

Forms of runner up

pluralrunners up

Questions about runner up

What is runner up the alternative spelling of?
Runner up is the alternative spelling of runner-up.

Words near runner up in the dictionary

  1. runner bean
  2. runner beans
  3. runner poison
  4. runner stone
  5. runner stones
  6. runner up
  7. runner's diarrhea
  8. runner's diarrhoea
  9. runner's high
  10. runner's knee
  11. runner's trots

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: runner up (page history and authors); runner-up (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:

Cite this entry: “runner up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/runner_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.