suboptimal.
Worse than optimal; of less than the highest standard or quality.
Meaning & usage
Worse than optimal; of less than the highest standard or quality.
A quickly produced suboptimal solution to a problem is often more useful than an optimal one that takes a long time to produce.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *upó Proto-Italic *supo Latin sub Latin sub-der. English sub- Proto-Indo-European *h₁ep-der. Proto-Indo-European *h₁épsder. Proto-Indo-European *h₁épi Proto-Indo-European *-tm̥mos ? Latin optimus English -al English optimal English suboptimal From sub- + optimal.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.