Word.ws English Dictionary

runnerup

runnerup is the alternative form 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 runnerup

pluralrunnerups

Questions about runnerup

What is runnerup the alternative form of?
Runnerup is the alternative form of runner-up.

Words near runnerup in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: runnerup (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: “runnerup.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/runnerup. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.