Rating

How to spell rating

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce rating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does rating mean?

1. nounA measure of how good, popular or creditworthy something is, often expressed as a score or class.
2. nounAn enlisted sailor in a navy who holds a rank below that of a commissioned officer.

Rating in a sentence

• The hotel earned a five-star rating from most reviewers.

• As a junior rating, he scrubbed the deck before dawn.

• A poor credit rating made the loan harder to secure.

• Every rating aboard reported to the chief petty officer.

Where does rating come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grows out of the verb 'rate', which English took in the 1400s from the Latin phrase pro rata parte, meaning 'according to a fixed proportion'. The root noun there is rata, the feminine form of ratus, the past participle of reri, a Latin verb meaning 'to reckon, calculate or judge'. To rate something was therefore to assign it a value or proportion, and the gerund 'rating' came to mean the score, class or proportion thus assigned. The same Latin reckoning root also lies behind 'ratio', 'ration' and 'rate' itself, all of which share the idea of measuring out a calculated amount. In British naval use the word took on a specialised sense for an enlisted sailor, because such sailors were classified, or rated, by their level of skill. The spelling stays simple because 'rate' drops its silent e before the -ing ending, leaving a single t.

How the word is built

• rate (from Latin rata, a fixed amount)
• -ing (noun suffix forming a result or process)