Word.ws English Dictionary

tardiest

tardiest is the superlative form of tardy.

Meaning of tardy

Adjective

tardy (comparative tardier, superlative tardiest)

  1. Late; overdue or delayed.
    • He yawned, then raised a tardy hand over his mouth.
    Synonyms:
    belated, delayed
  2. Moving with a slow pace or motion; not swift.
    • […] fashions in proud Italy, / Whose manners still our tardy apish nation / Limps after in base imitation.1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to...
  3. Ineffectual; slow-witted, slow to act, or dull.
    • His tardy performance bordered on incompetence.
  4. (obsolete) Unwary; unready (especially in the phrase take (someone) tardy).
    • Be not ta’en tardy by unwise delay.c. 1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Richard the Third: […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
  5. (obsolete) Criminal; guilty.
    • And the Franks served the Men much the same ſauce when they found them tardy, and made them run their Heats through the Streets1697, Jeremy Collier, Essays upon Several Moral Subjects

See all 10 meanings of tardy

Questions about tardiest

What is tardiest the superlative form of?
Tardiest is the superlative form of tardy.

Words near tardiest in the dictionary

  1. tardfaces
  2. tardidation
  3. tardied
  4. tardier
  5. tardies
  6. tardiest
  7. Tardif
  8. Tardiff
  9. Tardiffs
  10. Tardifs
  11. tardigrade

Source and license

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