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Expedient vs First-rate - What's the difference?

expedient | first-rate | Related terms |

Expedient is a related term of first-rate.


As nouns the difference between expedient and first-rate

is that expedient is expedient while first-rate is (military|nautical|historical) a ship of the line in the british navy that had over 100 guns on three gun decks.

As a verb expedient

is .

As an adjective first-rate is

(military|nautical|historical) describing a ship of the line in the british navy that had over 100 guns on three gundecks.

expedient

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Simple, easy, or quick; convenient.
  • Most people, faced with a decision, will choose the most expedient option.
  • * Bible, John xvi. 7
  • It is expedient for you that I go away.
  • * Whately
  • Nothing but the right can ever be expedient , since that can never be true expediency which would sacrifice a greater good to a less.
  • Governed by self-interest, often short-term self-interest.
  • * 1861 , John Stuart Mill,
  • But the Expedient', in the sense in which it is opposed to the Right, generally means that which is ' expedient for the particular interest of the agent himself; as when a minister sacrifices the interests of his country to keep himself in place.
  • (obsolete) Quick; rapid; expeditious.
  • * Shakespeare
  • His marches are expedient to this town.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A method or means for achieving a particular result, especially when direct or efficient; a resource.
  • * 1906 , O. Henry, :
  • He would never let her know that he was aware of the strange expedient to which she had been driven by her great distress.
  • * 2009 , (Diarmaid MacCulloch), A History of Christianity , Penguin 2010, page 709:
  • Depressingly, [...] the expedient of importing African slaves was in part meant to protect the native American population from exploitation.

    first-rate

    Noun

  • (military, nautical, historical) A ship of the line in the British navy that had over 100 guns on three gun decks
  • Adjective

  • (military, nautical, historical) Describing a ship of the line in the British navy that had over 100 guns on three gundecks.
  • (by extension) Exceptionally good.
  • * (Matthew Arnold)
  • Our only first-rate body of contemporary poetry is the German.
  • *
  • , title=(The Celebrity), chapter=1 , passage=He used to drop into my chambers once in a while to smoke, and was first-rate company. When I gave a dinner there was generally a cover laid for him. I liked the man for his own sake, and even had he promised to turn out a celebrity it would have had no weight with me.}}

    See also

    * second-rate * third-rate * fourth-rate