Word.ws English Dictionary

-st

-st suffix: verb suffix for the second-person singular; Alternative form of -est.

Suffix (1)

-st

  1. (archaic) Verb suffix for the second-person singular; Alternative form of -est.
    • Thou com'st to use thy tongue.c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...

Suffix (2)

-st

  1. Marks ordinals written in digits when the final term of the spelled number is "first"
    • the 21st century

Suffix (3)

-st

  1. Excrescent suffix (adding sound but largely not changing the meaning).
    • among + -st → amongst
    • mid + -st → midst

Origin of -st

From Middle English -st; see -est.

From the written form of first; see further etymology there.

From -s + -t of excrescent suffixes, with -s sometimes genitive.

Words formed from -st

Questions about -st

What does -st mean?
-st means verb suffix for the second-person singular; Alternative form of -est.
What part of speech is -st?
-st is a suffix.

Words near -st in the dictionary

  1. -splains
  2. -sploitation
  3. -spo
  4. -sporous
  5. -sson
  6. -st
  7. -stad
  8. -stan
  9. -Stans
  10. -stasis
  11. -stat

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: -st (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.

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