Meaning of less-than-stellar | Babel Free

Definitions

Mediocre; not satisfactory; not very good, poor; not meeting standards or expectations.

comparative-only, sarcastic, slang

Examples

“Some years ago there were hundreds of musicians of ability, but of less stellar renown, who toured the country, giving performances at less than stellar fees.”

“Yet the economic seers are at it again, seemingly unabashed by their somewhat less than stellar performances in 1969.”

“Where a bank may automatically reject any borrower based on a bad credit score, this is not true for all social lending networks. You can still have a less than stellar score and obtain funding as long as you can convince a peer tha your project is worthy or your business model is strong.”

“The Jacksons' less-than-stellar sales led to less-than-stellar bookings, then the less-than-stellar bookings led to no bookings.”

“Instead of discussing how to attract top candidates, states and PACE [the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe] blame each other for being responsible for electing less-than-stellar judges. […] At the same time, less-than-stellar candidates will get the message that they indeed have a chance. In other words, top candidates will not apply as the PACE is unpredictable and unprincipled, whereas less-than-stellar candidates will apply precisely because the PACE is unpredictable and unprincipled.”

“In effect, risk-based pricing creates a penalty for those in the mortgage market with less wealth and less-than-stellar credit. Other estimates on the interest-rate premiums that borrowers with less-than-stellar credit would face exceed the conservative estimates presented in figure 5.3.”

“I also quoted administrators at Jared [Kushner]'s high school, who described him as a less-than-stellar student and expressed dismay at Harvard's decision.”

“Most telling is her co-opting of Ursula von der Leyen, the less than stellar European Commission president who covets an undeserved second five-year term.”

CEFR level