second-rate

Thesaurus: synonyms, antonyms, and examples

of bad quality
badThe food wasn’t as bad as I’d expected.
poorTheir efforts produced extremely poor results.
low/poor/bad qualityTheir sausages are made with low-quality meat.
mediocreThe striker has been dropped after a mediocre performance.
inferiorThe copies are of inferior quality.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Quite good, or not very good
acceptable
acceptably
adequacy
adequate
adequately
goodish
government
half decent
iffy
impure
passably
patchily
patchiness
patchy
presentably
scratch
spotty
the/your average bearidiom
up to scratchidiom
weedy

mediocre | American Dictionary

mediocre
adjective[ not gradable ]
us/ˌmid·iˈoʊ·kər/
just acceptable but not good; not good enough:
The movie’s plot is predictable, the dialogue is second-rate, and the acting is mediocre.

mediocrity

noun[ U ]us/ˌmid·iˈɑk·rɪ·t̬i/
He urged educators to combat mediocrity in the classroom.

mediocre | Business English

mediocre
adjective
uk /ˌmiːdiˈəʊkər/us
ordinary and not very good:
What advice would you give to mediocre companies that want to dramatically improve themselves?
mediocre earnings/results/returns, etc.Even with mediocre returns, stocks generally outperform bonds and cash.
Commuters resent the mediocre performance of many of the privatized rail networks.

Examples of mediocre

mediocre
The essays, in fact, tend towards the mediocre; only a few fulfil the purpose of the collection.
This is also related to our mediocre ability to interpret the variability within flint tools assemblages.
This is supported by concern that many commercial composts are of low to mediocre quality12.
A mediocre career in the church may not be definitely worse than a career in the army.
For example, a few children can produce a particular cluster very accurately, or many children can produce that cluster with mediocre accuracy.
They attempt to give a mechanism for promoting high quality schemes, improving mediocre ones and for identifying poor schemes that should be redesigned or refused.
More important than this is the selection of poems, where often the good jostles the mediocre, and occasionally the mediocre is preferred for 'special study'.
First, there is no real ability to distinguish the good from the mediocre.
These regions had exceptionally high rural population densities, certainly when one considers the mediocre soil quality in some parts of them.
So often in state provision of services universal provision meant the equity of the mediocre.
The conclusion points to just how rare, and mediocre, human intelligence may be.
The regulations are used by mediocre men as the means of their self-protection, and taken advantage of by government clerks as sources of profit.
We have many mediocre officials but few men of talent and courage.
It is with inexperienced and mediocre teachers that methods become important.
This accelerated rate of forest clearing is facing a rather mediocre regeneration effort estimated at 1,000 ha per year.
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.