Funniest

How to spell funniest

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce funniest

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does funniest mean?

1. adjectiveMost amusing or causing the most laughter, among those being compared.

Funniest in a sentence

• That was the funniest joke anyone told at the office party.

• The funniest moment of the trip was when the tent collapsed on us.

Where does funniest come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is the superlative of 'funny', which itself was built from the noun 'fun'. 'Fun' first appeared in English around the late 1600s and originally meant a trick, a hoax, or a cheat; to 'make fun' of someone once carried that sharper sense of fooling them. The noun is thought to come from the older verb 'fun', meaning to cheat or hoax, possibly linked to the Middle English 'fonnen', meaning to be foolish or to dote. By the 1800s 'funny' had settled into its modern meaning of amusing or comical, and the superlative 'funniest' simply adds the usual '-est' ending. The spelling trap lies in the join: the base 'funny' ends in 'y', which changes to 'i' before '-est', and the doubled 'n' from 'funny' is carried straight through.

How the word is built

• fun (amusement)
• -y (adjective suffix, doubling the n)
• -est (superlative suffix, y changed to i)