Ranking is the act of arranging things in order from best to worst, strongest to weakest, or according to some other measure of comparison. When your teacher ranks spelling test scores from highest to lowest, or when a sports league ranks teams by their win-loss records, they're creating a ranking.

Rankings help us see how things compare. A restaurant ranking might list the most popular places to eat in your city. A video game leaderboard ranks players by their scores. Schools sometimes rank students by grade point average to determine who gets certain honors.

The word can also mean your position within such an arrangement. If you finish third in a race, your ranking is third place. A tennis player's ranking tells you how they compare to other players worldwide.

Rankings can be useful for making decisions (which book should I read first?) or understanding performance (how is my soccer team doing?). But rankings don't tell the whole story. The fifth-ranked speller in your class might have improved dramatically this year, even if they're not at the top. Rankings show numbers, but they don't always show the effort and growth behind them.