top-tier

adjective

ˈtäp-ˈtir 

: of the highest level or rank with regard to quality, reputation, or importance

Top-tier wines are the result of artisanal production techniques that demand rigorous attention to detail and, on occasion, financial sacrifice.

—Daniel Sogg

In general, the top-tier schools measure their success by the salaries that their graduates earn …

—Peter Baida

… leave fellow Republicans open to attack on what's shaping up as a top-tier issue in the 2008 elections.

—Mark Hertsgaard

Yes, this Kansas team is loaded with top-tier talent …

—Joe Posnanski

Kemp's first objective, his handlers said, was to establish himself as a top-tier contender.

—Lucy Howard

Examples of top-tier in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

In a recent Nature study, Clune and his colleagues unveiled the AI Scientist, an AI system that wrote a paper without human involvement that passed peer review for a workshop at the 2025 International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), a top-tier venue in the field of machine learning. —Jacek Krywko, Scientific American, 27 Mar. 2026

The conferences outside the Power Four in football and Power Five in men’s basketball receive immense benefits (financial and otherwise) from their association with the top-tier programs. —Jon Wilner, Mercury News, 27 Mar. 2026

Only 350 were made, and top-tier examples now sell for over $400,000. —Brett Berk, Robb Report, 27 Mar. 2026

Before the 2024 Paris Olympics, three top-tier sports — track and field, swimming and cycling — excluded transgender women who had been through male puberty. —CBS News, 26 Mar. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1879, in the meaning defined above