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adjective, rank·er, rank·est.
  1. growing with excessive luxuriance; vigorous and tall of growth: tall rank weeds.
  2. producing an excessive and coarse growth, as land.
  4. offensively strong, as a smell or taste.
  8. Slang. inferior; contemptible.

Origin of rank2

before 1000; Middle English; Old English ranc bold, proud; cognate with Old Norse rakkr straight, bold
Related formsrank·ish, adjectiverank·ly, adverbrank·ness, noun


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1. abundant, exuberant. 5. complete, sheer, entire. 6. repulsive, repellent. See flagrant. 7. foul.

Examples from the Web for rankness

Historical Examples

  • Its flesh is white and delicate, and has the usual taste, without any rankness.

    The History of Louisiana

    Le Page Du Pratz

  • Their flesh has no rankness, nor is inferiour in flavour to our common venison.

  • And the rankness of the growth of this evil is not more startling than its rapidity.

  • The chief resemblance seemed to be a certain "rankness in cussin'."


    Thomas Nelson Page

  • Owing to the rankness of its food, the smell of the Fulmar is very offensive.

British Dictionary definitions for rankness


  1. (ræŋk) J (oseph) Arthur, 1st Baron. 1888–1972, British industrialist and film executive, whose companies dominated the British film industry in the 1940s and 1950s
  2. (German raŋk) Otto (ˈɔto). 1884–1939, Austrian psychoanalyst, noted for his theory that the trauma of birth may be reflected in certain forms of mental illness


  1. a position, esp an official one, within a social organization, esp the armed forcesthe rank of captain
  2. high social or other standing; status
  3. a line or row of people or things
  4. the position of an item in any ordering or sequence
  5. British a place where taxis wait to be hired
  6. a line of soldiers drawn up abreast of each otherCompare file 1 (def. 5)
  7. any of the eight horizontal rows of squares on a chessboard
  8. (in systemic grammar) one of the units of description of which a grammar is composed. Ranks of English grammar are sentence, clause, group, word, and morpheme
  9. music a set of organ pipes controlled by the same stop
  10. maths (of a matrix) the largest number of linearly independent rows or columns; the number of rows (or columns) of the nonzero determinant of greatest order that can be extracted from the matrix
  11. break ranks military to fall out of line, esp when under attack
  12. close ranks to maintain discipline or solidarity, esp in anticipation of attack
  13. pull rank to get one's own way by virtue of one's superior position or rank
  1. (tr) to arrange (people or things) in rows or lines; range
  2. to accord or be accorded a specific position in an organization, society, or group
  3. (tr) to array (a set of objects) as a sequence, esp in terms of the natural arithmetic ordering of some measure of the elementsto rank students by their test scores
  4. (intr) to be important; ratemoney ranks low in her order of priorities
  5. mainly US to take precedence or surpass in rankthe colonel ranks at this camp

Word Origin

C16: from Old French ranc row, rank, of Germanic origin; compare Old High German hring circle


  1. showing vigorous and profuse growthrank weeds
  2. highly offensive or disagreeable, esp in smell or taste
  3. (prenominal) complete or absolute; uttera rank outsider
  4. coarse or vulgar; grosshis language was rank
Derived Formsrankly, adverbrankness, noun

Word Origin

Old English ranc straight, noble; related to Old Norse rakkr upright, Dutch, Swedish rank tall and thin, weak

Word Origin and History for rankness



early 14c., "row, line series;" c.1400, a row of an army, from Old French renc, ranc "row, line" (Modern French rang), from Frankish *hring or some other Germanic source (cf. Old High German hring "circle, ring"), from Proto-Germanic *khrengaz "circle, ring" (see ring (n.1)).






Much used 16c. as a pejorative intensive (cf. rank folly). This is possibly the source of the verb meaning "to reveal another's guilt" (1929, underworld slang), and that of "to harass, abuse," 1934, U.S. black dialect, though this also may be from the role of the activity in establishing social hierarchy (from rank (n.)).




Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper

Idioms and Phrases with rankness


In addition to the idiom beginning with rank

also see:
