Word.ws English Dictionary

third best

third best adjective: characterized by being a third best in the below sense.

Adjective

third best (not comparable)

  1. Characterized by being a third best in the below sense.
    • This reduces the inflation bias but brings higher employment variability than is optimal, a "stabilization bias," and hence leads to a third-best equilibrium rather than the second best.1997 Mar, Lars E. O. Svensson, “Optimal Inflation Targets, "Conservative" Central Banks, and Linear Inflation Contracts”, in The American Economic Review, volume 87, number 1, pages 98–114

Noun

third best (plural third bests)

  1. A second best that is second best relative to a situation that is itself a second best.

Antonyms of third best

Forms of third best

Adjective
alternative formthird-best
Noun
pluralthird bests

Questions about third best

What does third best mean?
Third best means characterized by being a third best in the below sense.
What part of speech is third best?
Third best can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near third best in the dictionary

  1. third art
  2. third base
  3. third baseman
  4. third basemen
  5. third bases
  6. third best
  7. third bests
  8. third camp
  9. third camps
  10. third class
  11. third classes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: third best (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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