INFERIOR • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Inferior

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/ɪnfˈɪriər/ Listen

adjective

Inferior adj.

1.

Lower in place, rank, value, excellence, etc.; less important or valuable; subordinate; underneath; beneath. "A thousand inferior and particular propositions." "The body, or, as some love to call it, our inferior nature." "Whether they are equal or inferior to my other poems, an author is the most improper judge."

2.

Poor or mediocre; as, an inferior quality of goods.

3.

(Astron.)

(a)

Nearer the sun than the earth is; as, the inferior or interior planets; an inferior conjunction of Mercury or Venus.

(b)

Below the horizon; as, the inferior part of a meridian.

4.

(Bot.)

(a)

Situated below some other organ; said of a calyx when free from the ovary, and therefore below it, or of an ovary with an adherent and therefore inferior calyx.

(b)

On the side of a flower which is next the bract; anterior.

5.

(Min.) Junior or subordinate in rank; as, an inferior officer.

Inferior court (Law), a court subject to the jurisdiction of another court known as the superior court, or higher court.

Inferior letter, Inferior figure (Print.), a small letter or figure standing at the bottom of the line (opposed to superior letter or figure), as in A2, Bn, 2 and n are inferior characters.

Inferior tide, the tide corresponding to the moon's transit of the meridian, when below the horizon.

noun

Inferior n. A person lower in station, rank, intellect, etc., than another. "A great person gets more by obliging his inferior than by disdaining him."

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Etymology of 'Inferior'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Inferior" Quotes from Famous Books

... spends an evening turning over these old pages, will find little reason to pride himself on the superiority of the popular reading of to-day. The short story, now in vogue, may be finely illustrated, and highly sensational, but its matter is certainly inferior, as a rule, to the general run of Wilson's stories. Wilson, in his humble way, was a gleaner in the field so richly harvested by Sir Walter Scott. The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border had called attention to the great stores of poetry and romance lingering ...

— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... So without delay, even before her stepmother's return, and without consulting her, she followed the minister's advice. Unhappily, her business-burdened father had no special interest in the welfare of any one's soul. Mrs. Yarnell henceforth treated Irene as a religious inferior. High school brought more work and little play. The unsuccessful father died with bad arteries when Irene was eighteen. He left little beside the mortgaged place; so Irene took up bookkeeping, and before she was twenty had a bank-position which, through her ability and merit and trustworthy conscientiousness, ...

— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... man was quite kind, and promised that he would do his best for us; and he was as good as his word, as we were immediately welcomed and permitted to add two to the four persons already inhabiting the hostelry. I confess that, even after a dak bungalow of the most inferior quality—such as that at Ghari Habibullah or Baramula—Mr. Nedou's hotel fails to impress one with an undue sense of luxury. In fact, it presented an even desolate and forlorn appearance with its gloomy and chilly passages and ...

— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... lodgment in the tissues of a foreign body—even of considerable size—is remarkable. In such cases the X-rays will reveal the presence of the foreign body if it is sufficiently opaque to cast a shadow. The heavy, lead-containing varieties of glass throw very definite shadows little inferior in sharpness and definition to those of metal; almost all the ordinary forms of commercial glass also may be ...

— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... against gravitation. But what earthly use has a man for valves in the intercostal veins which carry blood almost horizontally backward to the azygos veins? When recumbent, these valves are an actual obstacle to the free flow of the blood. The inferior thyroid veins which drop their blood into the innominate are obstructed by valves at their junction. Two pairs of valves are situate in the external jugular, and another pair in the internal jugular, but they do not ...

— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various

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