Word.ws English Dictionary

second-rate

second-rate adjective: of a Royal Navy ship of the line in the Napoleonic Era: having 80–98 guns across three gun decks, a complement of 700–750, and weighing approximately 2,200 tons burthen.

Adjective

second-rate (not comparable)

  1. (UK, historical) Of a Royal Navy ship of the line in the Napoleonic Era: having 80–98 guns across three gun decks, a complement of 700–750, and weighing approximately 2,200 tons burthen.
  2. (idiomatic) Of mediocre quality; not first-rate.
    • ‘Revelation’, to a philosopher such as Plotinus, was not merely irrational: it led to second-rate counterfeits of traditional academic philosophical culture. It was as if the inhabitants of an underdeveloped country were to seek to catch up with western technology by claiming to have learnt nuclear...1971, Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity: AD 150—750, Thames & Hudson LTD, published 2013, →ISBN, page 53
    • They are intrigued by Mrs Deelville; she is dowdy, languid-voiced, and ill-dressed, in every way appearing second-rate, who nonetheless - rather tiresomely - seems to have the knack of attracting men.1888, Rudyard Kipling, A Second-rate Woman

Noun

second-rate (plural second-rates)

  1. (UK, historical) A second-rate ship of the line.

second-rate meaning in Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada

second-rate in Tamil

இழிந்த, கீழ்த்தகைமையான, மட்டமான

second-rate in Malayalam

തരംതാണ, രണ്ടാംകിട, താഴ്ന്ന നിലവാരമുള്ള, രണ്ടാംതരം

second-rate in Kannada

ಉತ್ತಮವಲ್ಲದ, ಕಳಪೆಯಾದ

Synonyms of second-rate

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of second-rate

Forms of second-rate

Adjective
alternative formsecond rate
Noun
pluralsecond-rates

Words formed from second-rate

Questions about second-rate

What does second-rate mean?
Second-rate means of a Royal Navy ship of the line in the Napoleonic Era: having 80–98 guns across three gun decks, a complement of 700–750, and weighing approximately 2,200 tons burthen.
What is second-rate in Tamil?
Second-rate in Tamil is இழிந்த, கீழ்த்தகைமையான, மட்டமான. See Second-rate meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is second-rate?
Second-rate can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near second-rate in the dictionary

  1. second-person plurals
  2. second-person singular
  3. second-person singulars
  4. second-preimage attack
  5. second-preimage attacks
  6. second-rate
  7. second-rater
  8. second-raters
  9. second-rates
  10. second-round effect
  11. second-round effects

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: second-rate (page history and authors); second-rate (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); second-rate (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); second-rate (Kannada Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-second-rate.ogg.

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