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make the grade

verb

Etymology

Probably from a railway train climbing a length of track sloping uphill (a grade).

Definitions

  1. To prove satisfactory

    To prove satisfactory; to be successful or worthy of merit.

    • Near-synonym: fit the bill
    • In 1916 the famed Van Sweringen brothers bought their first railroad—the Nickel Plate. . . . This year, as usual, the tarnished Nickel Plate cannot make the grade. In first seven months it lost $2,003,779.
    • I read the news today, oh boy About a lucky man who made the grade And though the news was rather sad Well, I just had to laugh

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for make the grade. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA