Word.ws English Dictionary

stateliest

stateliest is the superlative form of stately.

Meaning of stately

Adjective

stately (comparative statelier, superlative stateliest)

  1. Worthy of respect; dignified, regal.
    • Warwick's first glance had revealed the fact that the young woman was strikingly handsome, with a stately beauty seldom encountered.1900, Charles W[addell] Chesnutt, chapter I, in The House Behind the Cedars, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company […], →OCLC
  2. Deliberate, unhurried; dignified.
    • And much as they welcome his promise to repeal "don't ask, don't tell", they are dismayed by the stately pace and bungled tactics of his attempts to do so.2010 October 14, “An Own Goal on Gay Rights”, in The Economist
  3. Grand; impressive; imposing.
    • In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree: / Where Alph, the sacred river, ran / Through caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless sea.1797, S[amuel] T[aylor] Coleridge, “Kubla Khan: Or A Vision in a Dream”, in Christabel: Kubla Khan, a Vision: The Pains of Sleep, London: […] John Murray, […], by William Bulmer and Co. […]...

See all 4 meanings of stately

Questions about stateliest

What is stateliest the superlative form of?
Stateliest is the superlative form of stately.

Words near stateliest in the dictionary

  1. statelessly
  2. statelessness
  3. statelet
  4. statelets
  5. statelier
  6. stateliest
  7. statelike
  8. statelily
  9. Stateline
  10. stateliness
  11. statelinesses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stateliest (page history and authors); stately (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: “stateliest.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stateliest. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.