Word.ws English Dictionary

third rate

third rate is the alternative spelling of third-rate.

Meaning of third-rate

Adjective

third-rate (not comparable)

  1. (UK, historical) Of a Royal Navy ship of the line in the Napoleonic Era: having 64–80 guns across two gun decks, a complement of 500–650, and weighing approximately 1,750 tons burthen.
  2. (idiomatic) Poor, shoddy; less than second-rate.
    • He was smoking a cherry-wood pipe, and looked on the whole as if he had borrowed his outfit from the wardrobe of a third-rate dramatic company.1913, Norman Lindsay, A Curate in Bohemia, Sydney: N.S.W. Bookstall Co., published 1932, page 96

See all 3 meanings of third-rate

Forms of third rate

pluralthird rates

Questions about third rate

What is third rate the alternative spelling of?
Third rate is the alternative spelling of third-rate.

Words near third rate in the dictionary

  1. Third Positionists
  2. third pounder
  3. third pounders
  4. third rail
  5. third rails
  6. third rate
  7. third rates
  8. third reading
  9. third readings
  10. Third Reich
  11. Third Republic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: third rate (page history and authors); third-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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Cite this entry: “third rate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/third_rate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.