inferior

1. 1.

   of or characteristic of low rank or importance

   Antonymssuperior

   Similarhumbleindifferentlow-levelmiddle-leveloutclassed
2. 2.

   of low or inferior quality

   Antonymssuperior

   Similarbadbasebumbush-leaguecheapjackcoarsecoarsenedcommercial
3. 3.

   written or printed below and to one side of another character

   Synonymssubscript

   printing

4. 4.

   having an orbit between the sun and the Earth's orbit

   “Mercury and Venus are inferior planets”

   Antonymssuperior

   astronomy

5. 5.

   lower than a given reference point

   “inferior alveolar artery”

   Similarbottom

   anatomy

6. 6.

   falling short of some prescribed norm

   “substandard housing”

   Synonymsdeficientsubstandard

   Similarnonstandard

1. 1.

   one of lesser rank or station or quality

   Antonymssuperior

   Broaderfollower
2. 2.

   a character or symbol set or printed or written beneath or slightly below and to the side of another character

   Synonymssubscript

   Broadercharacter

Other forms of inferior

plural

inferiors·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about inferior

What does inferior mean?

inferior means "of or characteristic of low rank or importance". That is the primary sense; the word has 8 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in inferior?

inferior has 4 syllables: in-fer-i-or. The stress falls on "fer". In IPA it is /ˌɪnˈfɪɹiɚ/.

What is another word for inferior?

Close synonyms include subscript, deficient, substandard, subscript. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

What is the opposite of inferior?

The recorded antonyms are superior, superior, superior, superior.

Is inferior a common word?

inferior is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.