second-best

1. 1.

   next to the best

   “his second-best bed”

   Similarbest

1. 1.

   in second place

   “he came off second-best”

Questions about second-best

What does second-best mean?

second-best means "next to the best". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in second-best?

second-best has 3 syllables: se-cond--best. The stress falls on "se".

Is second-best a common word?

second-best is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.