Happiest
adjectiveMost filled with happiness or contentment; the superlative of happy.
How to spell happiest
8 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce happiest
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does happiest mean?
- adjectiveMost filled with happiness or contentment; the superlative of happy.
Happiest in a sentence
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Their wedding day was the happiest they could remember.
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She felt happiest when the whole family gathered for dinner.
Where does happiest come from?
Language of origin: Old Norse
This is the superlative form of the adjective 'happy', which was built in Middle English around the 1300s from the noun 'hap', meaning 'luck', 'chance', or 'fortune'. That noun came into English from the Old Norse word 'happ', which meant 'good luck' or 'a lucky turn of events'. So 'happy' originally meant something much closer to 'lucky' or 'fortunate' than to 'cheerful', and only later drifted toward the modern sense of contentment and joy. The same 'hap' root still survives in the everyday words 'happen', 'haphazard', 'hapless', and 'perhaps', all of which carry that old idea of chance. When the superlative suffix '-est' was added, the final 'y' of 'happy' switched to an 'i', which is exactly the spelling rule that catches people out: it is 'happiest', not 'happyest'.
How the word is built
- happi- (from happy, adjective stem with y changed to i)
- -est (superlative suffix)
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