Nearest

How to spell nearest

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce nearest

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does nearest mean?

1. adjectiveClosest in distance, time, or relationship compared with all others.

Nearest in a sentence

• The nearest petrol station was fifteen miles away.

• She drove her elderly neighbour to the nearest hospital.

Where does nearest come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This is the superlative of 'near', a word with a slightly tangled history. The base 'near' began life as a comparative form, descending from the Old Norse 'naer', itself the comparative of an old word meaning 'nigh' or 'close'. Old English already had 'neah' (the ancestor of 'nigh') with its own comparative 'near', so the two streams reinforced each other in early Middle English. Over time speakers stopped feeling 'near' as a comparative at all and treated it as a plain positive adjective, then built fresh comparative and superlative forms on top of it, giving 'nearer' and 'nearest'. The superlative is formed in the ordinary native way, simply adding the suffix -est, which is why the spelling is regular and predictable once you know the base ends in 'r'.

How the word is built

• near (close in space, time, or relation)
• -est (superlative suffix)