Earliest

How to spell earliest

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce earliest

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does earliest mean?

1. adjectiveHappening or existing before all others in time; the soonest possible.

Earliest in a sentence

• The earliest flight leaves at six in the morning.

• Her earliest memories are of the family farm.

Where does earliest come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the superlative form of 'early', which descends from the Old English ǣrlīce, an adverb meaning 'soon' or 'before the usual time'. That word was built from ǣr, meaning 'before' or 'sooner', combined with the adverbial ending -līce, the same -ly that survives in modern adverbs. Over the centuries the word settled into use as both an adjective and an adverb, and it took the regular comparative and superlative endings, giving 'earlier' and 'earliest'. The spelling trap lives in the ending: because the base word ends in a consonant plus -y, that -y turns into an -i before the -est is added, so the word is spelled earl-i-est rather than 'earlyest'. The root ǣr also lies behind the slightly old-fashioned 'ere', meaning 'before', which still appears in poetry.

How the word is built

• earl- (from early, Old English ǣr 'before, soon')
• -i- (from the -y of early changing to -i)
• -est (superlative suffix)