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People and culture
Superlative Adjectives

Superlative adjectives are used to describe an object which is at he upper or lower
limit of a quality (the tallest, the smallest, the fastest, the highest). They are used in
sentences where a subject is compared to a group of objects.

Examples:

1. My house is the largest in our neighbourhood.

2. This is the smallest box I have ever seen.

3. Your dog ran the fastest of any dog in the race.

Forming regular superlative adjectives

a. One-syllable adjectives
- add -est at the end of the adjective

- if the adjective has a consonant + single vowel + consonant spelling, the final
consonant must be doubled before adding -est

- e.g. tall – tallest, big – biggest, sad – saddest

b. Two-syllable adjectives

- add -est or precede the adjective with most

- in many cases, both forms are used although one usage will be more common than
the other

- for adjectives ending with -y, change -y to -I before adding the ending

c. Three or more syllables

- put most in front of the adjective

- e.g. - important – most important
- expensive – most expensive

- exclusive – most exclusive

Note: add ‘the’ in front of the superlative adjectives.