Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Wiktionary
a. 1 of lesser value or quality than second-rate 2 (context military nautical historical English) describing a British ship of the line with 64 to 80 guns divided onto two gun decks. n. (context military nautical historical English) a sailing warship that can be described with the adjective "third-rate"
WordNet
adj. of lesser quality than second-rate
Wikipedia
In the British Royal Navy, a third rate was a ship of the line which from the 1720s mounted between 64 and 80 guns, typically built with two gun decks (thus the related term two-decker). Years of experience proved that the third rate ships embodied the best compromise between sailing ability (speed, handling), firepower, and cost. So, while first rates and second rates were both larger and more powerful, the third-rate ships were in a real sense the optimal configuration.
Usage examples of "third-rate".
The best he could ever be was a third-rate cardsharp, no matter how many delusions of grandeur he carried around with him.
I hurry past third-rate Theseus and his plaster legions, through the lofty lobby where chandeliers hang from ceilings infested with gilt cupids, around the praying gateman outside up the sidewalk to the belly-high cement wall that runs along the steep bank of the Nile.
It is inhabited by 1,500 US Navy and Air force personnel, 1,500 Ipak and Mauritian workers to do all the third-rate jobs and forty-two Brits.
Ian barely had time to read the daily news, much less gossip written by anonymous rumormongers for third-rate newspapers.
Ford was a third-rate trainer who by general consensus was as honest and trustworthy as a pickpocket at Aintree, and he trained in a hollow in the Downs at a spot where any passing motorist could glance down into his yard.
It was hard to believe that the brilliant Amalia Kazimirovna Bezhetskaya could be staying at this third-rate hotel.
I call those third-rate fortunes, which are composed of a fluctuating capital, dependent upon the will of others, or upon chances which a bankruptcy involves or a false telegram shakes, such as banks, speculations of the day -- in fact, all operations under the influence of greater or less mischances, the whole bringing in a real or fictitious capital of about fifteen millions.
Up and down the streets they cavorted like third-rate mummers in search of an audience.
Leo obtained summer employment in the Catskills and Poconos at third-rate hotels on the Borscht circuit.
In my experience, when a dingy, third-rate rustbucket sinks, unless it has the luck of carrying oil, lots of it, enough to kill entire ecosystems, no one cares and no one hears about it.
If only you could know what I have fought up from, a foundling without a name abandoned in a third-rate Parisian hotel, reared a scullion, butt and scapegoat, with associates only of the lowest, scullions, beggars, pickpockets, Apaches, and worse--!
When the war and his teeth were finished, Leo obtained summer employment in the Catskills and Poconos at third-rate hotels on the Borscht circuit.
Almost everybody admits that if it is abandoned England must sink to the position of a third-rate power like Holland.
Vlad grinned at his audience and shrugged—in his manner, he reminded Beheim of the buffoonish, third-rate illusionists who had sometimes appeared during intermissions at the Opéra Comique.
With his record, Rosen shouldn't even be clowning for a third-rate outfit, let alone a world-class circus like the Montero.