Meaning
Of the highest quality or excellence; first-class. It serves as an adjective ('a first-rate mechanic', 'the food was first rate') and, more datedly, as a cheerful standalone reply meaning very well ('How are you? First rate!'). The adjectival use is standard; the exclamatory use now sounds old-fashioned. Warm, slightly old-fashioned praise, especially in British English; the standalone exclamation now reads as quaint. Regional use: General English.
Origin
It comes from the Royal Navy's rating system, which classified warships into six rates by size and strength from the beginning of the seventeenth century until the mid-nineteenth century; a first rate was the largest and most powerful class, carrying around a hundred guns on three decks in the Napoleonic era. Etymonline dates the naval rate terms themselves to the 1640s and the general adjective 'of the highest excellence' to the 1660s, so the metaphor crossed from the dockyard into everyday speech within roughly a generation. Purely emphatic uses, expressing high spirits or health, are noted from 1812, and the colloquial quasi-adverbial use from 1844. The full scale of the rating system gave English second-rate and third-rate into the bargain, now with the opposite emotional weight.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- feeling first rate
- in first-rate condition
- second rate
Usage Examples
- The hotel was first rate, from the room to the service.
- She did a first-rate job of calming the investors.
- How's the new knee working out? First rate, thanks.