From the "C" grade given to students who are not failing, but also not doing particularly well.
C-grade (not generallycomparable,comparativemoreC-grade,superlativemostC-grade)
- (informal) Not very good;mediocre,mid.
- Coordinate terms:A-grade,B-grade,D-grade,F-grade
- Near-synonyms:second-rate,third-rate;see alsoThesaurus:mediocre
2014 June 12, Justin Peters, “Dispatches From Book Leave, Part 2”, inSlate[1], archived fromthe original on14 April 2019:[…] Easter is April 20, and I have set an informal goal of having 50,000 words on paper by that date—not necessarily good words, mind you, justC-grade stuff that I can work with and refine during the revision process.
2018 December 7, Dennis Harvey, “Film Review: 'All the Devil's Men'”, inVariety[2], Los Angeles, C.A.:Penske Media Corporation,→ISSN,→OCLC, archived fromthe original on20 July 2023:Yet there's still a tang ofC-grade cliché to a movie too obviously trying to pull off global intrigue on a low budget, with a surfeit of alpha-male posturing, hamfisted dialogue, and incessant gunfire ultimately failing to provide sufficient credibility (let alone production values).
2022 July 29,Linette Lopez, “It's official: Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner are smarter than Mark Zuckerberg”, inBusiness Insider[3], New York, N.Y.:Insider Inc.,→OCLC, archived fromthe original on14 May 2023:The basic problem with Yahoo was that it never figured out what kind of company it was after it was beaten out by Google. It never figured out how to be more than aC-grade version of Google.
2023 April 28, Richard Whittaker, “The Best Man”, inThe Austin Chronicle[4], Austin, T.X.: The Austin Chronicle Corporation,→ISSN,→OCLC, archived fromthe original on26 April 2023:But this is a return to the kind ofC-grade cheapo actioneers that damaged his reputation in the first place.
