Word.ws English Dictionary

sixth rate

sixth rate is the alternative spelling of sixth-rate.

Meaning of sixth-rate

Adjective

sixth-rate (not comparable)

  1. (UK, historical) Of a Royal Navy warship in the Napoleonic Era: having 20–28 guns on one gun deck, a complement of 140–200, and weighing 340–550 tons burthen.
    • The Navy classified warships by their number of cannons, and with twenty-eight, she was a sixth-rate–the lowest rank.2023, David Grann, chapter 1, in The Wager, Doubleday
  2. (idiomatic, uncommon) Terrible, awful; less than fifth-rate.

See all 3 meanings of sixth-rate

Forms of sixth rate

pluralsixth rates

Questions about sixth rate

What is sixth rate the alternative spelling of?
Sixth rate is the alternative spelling of sixth-rate.

Words near sixth rate in the dictionary

  1. sixth graders
  2. sixth grades
  3. sixth man
  4. sixth men
  5. Sixth Month
  6. sixth rate
  7. sixth rates
  8. Sixth Republic
  9. sixth sense
  10. sixth senses
  11. Sixth World

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sixth rate (page history and authors); sixth-rate (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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