What does the S in "S-Rank" stand for?

[beastro]

No idea, just that it's typical Japanese weirdness.

 

[GabeZhul]

Snape. If you get a double S, it means Severus Snape. SSS stands for Super Severus Snape.

Then SSSS is Super Saiyan Severus Snape?
If you are now imagining Alan Rickman with the spiky blonde super saiyan hair... You are welcome.

On a different note, this thread actually made me realize that the English language has a disproportionately high number of superlatives starting with the letter "S". What's up with that?

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Snape. If you get a double S, it means Severus Snape. SSS stands for Super Severus Snape.

Then SSSS is Super Saiyan Severus Snape?
If you are now imagining Alan Rickman with the spiky blonde super saiyan hair... You are welcome.

On a different note, this thread actually made me realize that the English language has a disproportionately high number of superlatives starting with the letter "S". What's up with that?

Super, superb, special, stylish, sensational, supreme, superior, smashing, smoking... maybe it's because the S is so easy to pronounce? All you do is whistle. You do know how to whistle, do you?

 

[AmberSword]

Most people already answered it, the origin of the "S" rank is the Japanese ranking system.

Japanese school rankings has S above A, where S means 10/10. I believe it stands for Superior, as some countries use some variation of an I-M-S (Inferior, Medium, Superior) grading system. Example: Brazil uses II-MI-MM-MS-SS (so SS kinda means "Superior-Superior").

That's why Japanese games use the S-A-B-C-D scale.

It's not anything new or video-games exclusive, the Yu Yu Hakusho anime, aired from 1990 to 1994, commonly mentioned the Rank A and S monsters are the biggest threat in existence.

Note: those "High Spectations Asian Father" memes are wrong because "A" in Japan is less than excelent.

I looked up the Japanese grading system in www.classbase.com (you can check out the granding systems of each country there) and S is symbolized by the kanji 秀, which apparently translates to "Exemplary" and is rarely given. I looked up the kanji on Google and according to that it translates to "Beautiful" though.

I understand that japanese kanji is very similar to the chinese pictographs, so based on my understanding of chinese, 秀 can mean both beautiful and exemplary, and even both of them at the same time, putting weight behind the "S" rank. The easiest way to translate it in games would probably be "Beautifully/Masterfully executed"

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

"S-hit we ran out of letters"

obviously