Thesaurus article: good enough but not excellent

If something is acceptable, it is good enough but it is not excellent.

The opposite of acceptable is unacceptable.

Reasonable is another word for acceptable, but it is most often used before a noun.

If something is adequate it is good enough for a particular purpose. Something that is passable is also good enough for a particular purpose, but it is not the best thing possible.

If you think that something is good enough to suit a purpose, you can also say that it will do. This is used mainly in UK English.

The words satisfactory, fair, and average can refer to things that are as good as you expect them to be, but no more. All three words are also used in academic writing to rate or comment on a student's work.

The opposite of satisfactory is unsatisfactory.

The most common words to say that something is neither good nor bad but satisfactory are ok (or okay) and fine. Ok is informal, and fine is used in everyday language, particularly in conversation.

In informal language, if you say that something is not bad or not too bad, you are saying it is fairly good or satisfactory.

In informal language, things that are middling are neither good nor bad.

The expression all right has a very broad meaning, and can be used to say that something is just good enough.

Things that are decent or respectable are fairly good, or somewhat better than expected.

If something is tolerable it is barely acceptable.

For words that describe things that are better than acceptable, see the article at good.

For words that describe people or things that are extremely good, see the article at excellent.

For words that describe people or things that are better than everyone or everything else, see the article at best.