Picture a short ladder of seriousness with three rungs, numbered from the top down. Something has already happened — a burn, a crime — and the job is to say how bad it is by pointing at a rung. First-degree is the rung you name first; second-degree is one step below it. The words never stand alone: they are pinned to the front of the thing being , so what gets a number is the burn or the charge, not the person.
可以想成一把只有三格的刻度尺，由重到輕編號。事情已經發生了——燒燙傷、或是一件案子——接下來要做的，是指出它落在哪一格。first-degree 是先被點到的那一格，second-degree 就在它下面一階。要注意這兩個字不能單獨站著：它們一定貼在被評級的東西前面。所以被編號的是「傷」或「罪名」，不是人。也因為是刻度，second 不等於「不嚴重」，只是「不是最上面那一格」。