Word.ws English Dictionary

finest

/ˈfaɪnɪst/

finest is the superlative form of fine.

Noun

finest pl (plural only)

  1. (US, informal, plural, plural-only, often preceded by the) Police officers.
    • Fifty of New York's finest were on hand for security.
    Synonyms:
    city's finest
  2. (US, informal, plural, plural-only) Members of the military.
    • Told him I'd had a fun time with a sailor & he said, "Oh no! Are you corrupting our country's finest?"1977-1980, Lou Sullivan, personal diary, quoted in 2019, Ellis Martin, Zach Ozma (editors), We Both Laughed In Pleasure

Meaning of fine

Adjective

fine (comparative finer, superlative finest)

  1. Of superior quality.
    • The tree frog that they encountered was truly a fine specimen.
    Synonyms:
    good, excellent
  2. (ironic) Impressively bad, inappropriate, or unsatisfactory.
    • You're a fine one to talk about laziness.
    Synonyms:
    hell of a
  3. (informal) Being acceptable, adequate, passable, or satisfactory; having one's well-being be no cause for concern.
    • How are you today? – Fine.
  4. (informal) Good-looking, attractive.
    • That man is so fine that I'd jump into his pants without a moment's hesitation.
  5. Subtle, delicately balanced or discriminated.
    • In any case, Feinsilver’s nomenclatural suggestions and fine distinctions did not enjoy widespread adoption.2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide, page 7
  6. (obsolete) Showy; overdecorated.
    • They will permit the poet to select any action he pleases, and to suffer that action to go as it will, provided he gratifies them with occasional bursts of fine writing1853, Matthew Arnold, Preface to The Poems of Matthew Arnold

See all 42 meanings of fine

Synonyms of finest

Words formed from finest

Phrases with finest

Questions about finest

What does finest mean?
Finest means police officers.
What is finest the superlative form of?
Finest is the superlative form of fine.
What part of speech is finest?
Finest is a noun.
How do you pronounce finest?
Finest is pronounced /ˈfaɪnɪst/.

Words near finest in the dictionary

  1. finesser
  2. finessers
  3. finesses
  4. finessing
  5. finessings
  6. finest
  7. finest hour
  8. finest hours
  9. finest-threaded
  10. finestructure
  11. finetooth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: finest (page history and authors); fine (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-finest.ogg.

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