Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Second-class \Sec"ond-class`\, a. Of the rank or degree below the best or highest; inferior; second-rate; as, a second-class house; a second-class passage; a second-class citizen.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1833, from noun phrase (1810), from second (adj.) + class (n.). Phrase second-class citizen is recorded from 1942.\n\nThe Negro recognizes that he is a second-class citizen and that status is fraught with violent potentialities, particularly today when he is living up to the full responsibilities of citizenship on the field of battle.
[Louis E. Martin, "To Be or Not to Be a Liberal," in "The Crisis," September 1942]
Wiktionary
a. inferior in quality or standing.
WordNet
adj. of inferior status or quality; "a second-class citizen"; "second-class accommodations"
Usage examples of "second-class".
The Hotel Ivoire was a very second-class place, a lodging-house, or hotel with furnished rooms let out by the week to lodgers with whom the proprietor had no very close acquaintance.
A hearing upon revocation of second-class mailing privileges by an assistant Postmaster General upon notice, at which relator was heard and evidence received was due process.
I am instructing the authorities at all ports east of Suez to apprehend one of your second-class passengers, should he leave the ship.
As for Martin Green, Walter Lonsdale and Joe Digby, they contented themselves with hoping that they might receive their badges as second-class scouts when the camp was over.
The second-class lifeboats were being filled as well, and in third class, some of the passengers were breaking through barriers and locked doors, in the hope of boarding in second class or even first, but they had no idea where to go, or how to get there.
This band was only to receive a second-class medal, for one cannot give first-class medals to everybody, can one?
Most engineers were assigned to tiny rooms with fold-down beds, but Hackworth bore the loftier title of Artifex and had been a team leader on this very project, so he rated a second-class stateroom with one double bed and a fold-out for Fiona.
Virgil told Tyler the Maine was a second-class battleship, but had twelve inches of armor around her hull and eight to twelve inches protecting her turrets and barbettes.
Within a few hours, father and daughter were settling into bunkbeds in a second-class cabin of the airship Falkland Islands , bound for London.
Upon reaching the station they would sell the burros, the tools, and even the hides, which would give them more than sufficient money to buy second-class railroad tickets to the port.
Now, in the bright noon sun, in the slatted seats of the second-class coach among congestions of baskets and children and cheap suitcases, they sat two and two staring at one another and the astonishment became one and shared.
The dailies actually printed in Munich are all called second-class by the public.
He held a proper British passport, not just a second-class Hong Kong passport, also an American Green Card the Alien Card that most priceless of possessions that gave him free access to work and play and live in the U.
He held a proper British passport, not just a second-class Hong Kong passport, also an American Green Card-the Alien Card-that most priceless of possessions that gave him free access to work and play and live in the U.
Having found his train, Winkler walked up the length of it, past the three first-class carriages and the buffet car, to the three blue-upholstered second-class carriages near the front end.