Meanings
plural Elo ratings
- A metric indicating the relative skill level of a player in zero-sum games such as chess.
In layman’s terms, any player with a higher Elo rating will have a better chance of winning a game of chess against an opponent with a lower Elo rating.
2022 August 10, “Chess Ranking System: A Complete Guide”, in Square Off, archived from the original on 24 Nov 20222 more examples
Thus, for analyses such as Elo rating, where the order in which contests occurs matters, one must resort to creating a set of randomly shuffled contest sequences to be able to assess the effects of temporal order.
2015, Jens Krause, Richard James, et al., editors, Animal Social Networks, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 65“You're pretty good at this game,” Lee said.¶ “Got an Elo rating over twenty-six hundred.”¶ “Elo? What's that?”¶ “The FIDE uses it to rank players.”¶ “FIDE?”¶ “Fédération Internationale des Échecs,” Cam said, speaking in an exaggerated French accent.
2018, Michael Palmer, Daniel Palmer, The First Family, St. Martin's Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 32Synonyms: Elo
Synonyms & antonyms
nounA metric indicating the relative skill level of a player in zero-sum games such as chess.
Origin
Named after Hungarian-American physics professor Arpad Elo (1903–1992), who invented the metric.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
Elo rating. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Elo%20rating
“Elo rating.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Elo%20rating. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Elo rating,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Elo%20rating.
Source: Elo rating on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.