Make the grade

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Meaning

Reach the required standard, prove good enough, or succeed in a test, role, profession, or difficult undertaking. Informal but common. It refers to clearing a standard, not necessarily earning a literal school grade. Regional use: American in origin; now general English.

Origin

The success sense is recorded in American English by 1912. It is often traced to railroad engineering, where a locomotive must climb or negotiate a gradient, and the National Park Service includes it among railway expressions. However, early examples do not clearly reveal whether speakers had a railway grade, a standard of quality, or a school mark in mind. Those senses could reinforce one another. The railway account is plausible and culturally well established, but it should not be presented as conclusively proved by the earliest citations.

Research Sources

  1. Make the grade Cambridge Dictionary
  2. Grade - Etymology, Origin & Meaning Online Etymology Dictionary
  3. Language of the Rails U.S. National Park Service

Variants

  • Made the grade
  • Making the grade

Usage Examples

  • Only three prototypes made the grade in the winter trials.
  • She trained for two years before making the grade as a rescue diver.
  • The cheaper fabric looked convincing but did not make the grade under stress.

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