closest

1. 1
   adjective

   Superlative of close.

   Of all the runners, he finished closest to the leader.

   Mercury is the planet closest to the sun.

   Note

   Every shade of the adjective close carries into its superlative: nearest in space or time, most exactly matching, most intimate. Rudolf Schuster's botanical study of 1992 speaks of one plant family's closest affinities with another, a resemblance rather than a distance. David Gunston, writing in Railway Magazine in 1958, praises the closest possible ring of truth, a natural pairing for judging how near something comes to its model.

2. 2
   verbarchaic

   Archaic second-person singular simple present indicative of close.

   Note

   The verb form that belongs with thou: close plus the old second-person ending -est, as in thou closest the gate. It shares its spelling with the superlative "most close", and grammar tells them apart. After thou it is a verb. Before a noun, or after the, it is the adjective. Outside deliberately old-fashioned writing, modern English simply says you close.

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