Modifies a noun

• power: It isn't that I doubt the ability of America's fighting forces to take out a third-rate power like Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

• actor: One day, someone will make a fabulous movie about third-rate actors in Hollywood.

• novel: I have written a goodly number of candidly speaking third-rate novels, which have been fairly remunerative here, and fairly read in America.

• copy: The group is a third-rate copy of Scala, performing modern repertoire in a choral setting.

• version: It exposes ' American Idiot ' as nothing more than the third-rate version of ' Suspect Device ' that it is.

• man: The third-rate great man is superior to other men, like Whistler.