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:
At a coffee shop nestled in the rice paddies of Guilin’s Yangshuo county, flocks of visitors from different parts of the country engaged in one of Chinese tourists’ favorite low-cost activities: taking lots of pictures.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 8, 2026
Wisconsin Hot Cheese is another favorite: the deep-fried cheddar nuggets are cooked to order and give even a great cheese curd some serious competition.
From Salon ● Sep. 8, 2026
Check out: Robin’s has been a favorite dinner destination for decades.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2026
Emphatic gains were chalked up Monday by some of the sector’s favorite names for trading: Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix in South Korea and Kioxia in Japan.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 7, 2026
She was singing my favorite song—a song I had heard my mother sing many, many times, “The Old Master Painter from the Far Away Hills.”
From "Summer of the Monkeys" by Wilson Rawls
This year’s lineup includes everyone from Hollywood veterans to reality TV favorites and an Olympic gold medalist.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 8, 2026
“This doesn’t do anything for you, whoever the favorites are, whoever is talked about, offseason, all that,” McVay told reporters recently.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 6, 2026
Here are 10 more I’ll be looking out for – some I’ve seen, others I have high hopes for – along with premiere dates for a selection of returning favorites.
From Salon ● Sep. 4, 2026
One of his favorites was a beaten-up copy of a 1998 bestseller titled “Who Moved My Cheese?”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026
It was a concoction somewhere between green soup and palm nut soup, two favorites of mine; much closer to home food than anything I had tasted since I left.
From "Flying Through Water" by Mamle Wolo
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.
