Word.ws English Dictionary

-est

/ɪst/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/əst/

-est suffix: used to form the superlative of adjectives and adverbs.

Suffix (1)

-est

  1. Used to form the superlative of adjectives and adverbs.
    • longest, biggest, fastest, motliest

Suffix (2)

-est

  1. (archaic, dialectal) Used to form the second-person singular present tense and past tense of verbs. (if thou is the subject; not used with you)
    • goest, makest, wentest, madest

-est meaning in Arabic, Indonesian, Persian and Thai

-est in Arabic

superlative of adjectives and adverbs
اَلـ al--

-est in Indonesian

superlative of adjectives and adverbs
paling

-est in Persian

superlative of adjectives and adverbs
ترین tarin

-est in Thai

superlative of adjectives and adverbs
...ที่สุด ...tîi-sùt
More languagesFewer languages
-est in Vietnamese
... nhất

Forms of -est

alternative form-'st
alternative form-st

Origin of -est

From Middle English -est, from Old English -est, -ost, from Proto-West Germanic *-ist, *-ōst, from Proto-Germanic *-istaz, *-ōstaz, related to comparative -er. Cognate of Afrikaans -ste, Dutch -st, German -(e)st, Danish -(e)st, Swedish -(a)st. Via PIE cognate with Ancient Greek -ιστος (-istos), see Pleistocene, protist.

From Middle English -est, -st, from Old English -est, -ast, -st, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *-zi, from Proto-Indo-European *-si. The -t was by transfer from inverted order where thou followed the verb, which also occurred in most dialects of Middle Dutch and Middle High German (compare modern German -st).

Questions about -est

What does -est mean?
-est means used to form the superlative of adjectives and adverbs.
What is -est in Arabic?
-est in Arabic is اَلـ (al--). See -est meaning in Arabic.
What part of speech is -est?
-est is a suffix.
How do you pronounce -est?
-est is pronounced /ɪst/ (UK).

Words near -est in the dictionary

  1. -esis
  2. -esque
  3. -ess
  4. -esse
  5. -esses
  6. -est
  7. -estan
  8. -esthesia
  9. -esthesis
  10. -estr-
  11. -esy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: -est (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl--est.wav.

Cite this entry: “-est.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/-est. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.