Oldest

How to spell oldest

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce oldest

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does oldest mean?

1. adjectiveHaving lived or existed for the longest time; greatest in age within a group.

Oldest in a sentence

• As the oldest child, she often looked after her younger brothers.

• The museum houses the oldest printed book in the country.

Where does oldest come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is the superlative of 'old', which descends from the Old English 'eald', meaning aged or antique, a word shared across the West Germanic family with the Old High German 'alt' and the Dutch 'oud'. The deeper root is the Proto-Germanic 'aldaz', literally 'grown up' or 'matured', which traces back to a verb meaning 'to nourish' or 'to grow'; the same idea survives in the related word 'adult', borrowed much later from Latin. The superlative ending '-est' is itself ancient native English machinery, attached to adjectives to mark the highest degree, as in 'longest' and 'strongest'. Because the base 'old' simply takes '-est' with no change to its spelling, 'oldest' is wholly regular and has caused English writers little trouble since the medieval period.

How the word is built

• old (from Old English eald: aged, antique)
• -est (superlative suffix)