ranking
Americanadjective
noun
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an act or instance of indicating relative standing.
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a list showing such standing.
adjective
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prominent; high ranking
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slang possessed of style; fashionable; exciting
noun
Etymology
Origin of ranking
Explanation
Your spot on a scale is your ranking. If your football team has a #10 ranking and you’re playing #1, well good luck. Your class ranking is how you measure up. The student with the highest ranking is the valedictorian. All kinds of things have rankings, from the top 100 colleges in the US to a person's constantly updated list of favorite horror movies. Athletes and the teams they play for have rankings too. In the military, someone who has a higher rank, or position, than anyone else who's present might say, "As the ranking officer, I'll command the troops to retreat."
Vocabulary lists containing ranking
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The ranking resulted from surveying more than 24,000 city residents worldwide and gathering insights from a panel of Time Out experts and editors.
From BBC • May 13, 2026
Researchers were able to pull adequate data from 35 states to compare reading scores, with California ranking 29th in academic growth.
From Los Angeles Times • May 13, 2026
The United Arab Emirates tops the ranking of AI usage at 70.1 percent, followed by Singapore, Norway, Ireland and France.
From Barron's • May 7, 2026
Similarly, while it makes sense to include cabinet members in the line of succession, ranking them according to when their agency was created produces odd results.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 4, 2026
Chronicler guessed he had been a low ranking officer not long ago.
From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
