favorite
Americannoun
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favorites
plural
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a person or thing regarded with special favor or preference.
That song is an old favorite of mine.
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Sports. a competitor considered likely to win.
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a person or thing popular with the public.
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a person treated with special or undue favor by a king, official, etc..
favorites at the court.
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Digital Technology. bookmark.
adjective
Usage
Spelling tips for favorite The word favorite is hard to spell for two reasons. First, in British English it is spelled with a u (favourite), unlike the American English spelling favorite. Second, the final e is silent. How to spell favorite: When you do someone a favor, you don't do it for yourself. So, there is no u in favor. Now that we have the beginning of the word down, how do we remember the e in -ite? Well, it wouldn't be anything without an Ending (an e at the end). Put the two together and you get favorite.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of favorite
First recorded in 1575–85; from Middle French, from Italian favorito, “favored,” past participle of favorire “to favor, support,” from favore “favor, goodwill”; see favor, -ite 2
Explanation
Your favorite is what you like best. Your room is probably painted your favorite color, and the folders you carry to school are probably that color too. In a competition, the favorite is the one considered likely to win. If you bet on the favorite in a horse race, you're betting on the horse lots of other people think will win. The opposite of the favorite is the dark horse, or the underdog, or the long shot. You may have a favorite recipe, a favorite Web site, a favorite pastime, a favorite anything.
Vocabulary lists containing favorite
Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"
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"Crittercam to the Rescue"
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"I Remember"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
How weird are some of Silicon Valley’s favorite ideas?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 29, 2026
Send your favorite way to save or grow your money to [email protected], and we’ll share it with our readers.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 29, 2026
So now the Rams, the much-ballyhooed super team that opened the season as a heavy Super Bowl favorite, are 1-2.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 28, 2026
Once I noticed this pattern, I realized it’s how I make most of my favorite soups: tomato soup, corn chowders, vegetable soups, bean soups and even chicken soup.
From Salon ● Sep. 28, 2026
To close the service we had chosen Mama’s favorite hymn, “Fairest Lord Jesus.”
From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom
I’ll be sharing some of my favorites over the coming weeks, but a pot of soup in the fridge can quietly carry several lunches without asking much of you.
From Salon ● Sep. 22, 2026
Russ: I got all your favorites, sesame, onion, everything, plain.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 21, 2026
At the Emmys on Monday, Reba McEntire sang a soulful tribute to Parton with a cover of her 1983 song “Appalachian Mountains,” one of McEntire’s all-time favorites.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 15, 2026
Helmets can’t even display their logos in the NFL so the league can avoid the impression that it plays favorites with safety gear.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 13, 2026
She liked to listen to histories, the longer the better, and her favorites were written by a man named Ulrich Bonnell Phillips.
From "Ophie's Ghosts" by Justina Ireland
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
