Word.ws English Dictionary

runners-up

runners-up is the plural 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

Questions about runners-up

What is runners-up the plural of?
Runners-up is the plural of runner-up.

Words near runners-up in the dictionary

  1. runners
  2. runners and riders
  3. runners knee
  4. runners up
  5. runners' knee
  6. runners-up
  7. runnerup
  8. runnerups
  9. runnest
  10. runnet
  11. runneth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: runners-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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-runners-up.oga.

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