DictionaryAI

favourite

FAYV-rit/ˈfeɪv.ɹɪt/

Noun pluralfavourites

US spellingfavorite

6 meanings of favourite

Practice

  1. 1
    liked bestadjective
    Liked more than others of the same kind, whether best of all or among those someone likes best.

    Her favourite part of the holiday was the boat trip to the island.

    That café on the high street is one of my favourite places to meet friends.

    UsageIt already means liked best, so careful writers avoid most favourite; the opposite is my least favourite.

    Similarpreferred, favoured

  2. 2
    best-loved onenouncountable
    A person or thing liked more than others of the same kind, or treated with special favour, as a parent's or a monarch's favourite.

    Being the youngest, Amy was her father's favourite and was hardly ever told off.

    The lemon cake has been a firm favourite with customers since the café opened.

    UsageOften a favourite with or among a group of people: a firm favourite with customers.

    Similarpet, darling

  3. 3
    likely winnernouncountable
    The competitor or entrant regarded as the likeliest winner of a race, match or contest.

    The grey mare started as the 3-1 favourite but faded badly in the last furlong.

    France went into the tournament as one of the favourites but were knocked out in the quarter-finals.

    UsageUsually the favourite to win or the favourite for a prize, often with odds: the 3-1 favourite.

    Similarfront-runner

    Oppositeoutsider, underdog

Less common meanings

  1. 4
    bookmarknouncountable
    A bookmark: a saved link that lets a user return to a page, kept in a web browser or on a website.

    Her favourites bar was crammed with links to news sites and online shops.

    Save the bus timetable as a favourite and you can open it with one tap.

    Similarbookmark

    Note

    Here the word comes from software: Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge call saved links favourites, and that browser's large share of users made the word a synonym of bookmark. The two now name the same thing, so the strip of saved links under the address bar goes by either name, the favourites bar or the bookmarks bar, depending on the browser.

    Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 1 fact

    • The computing sense arose from browser terminology: Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge use ‘favourites’, and Internet Explorer’s large market share established its equivalence with ‘bookmark’. en.wikipedia.org
  2. 5
    verbtransitive
    To add an item to the personal list of favourites that a website lets its users keep; also, to bookmark a page.

    Users can favourite a listing and get an alert when its price drops.

    Thousands of people favourited his post within an hour of it going up.

    Similarbookmark, save, like

    Oppositeunfavourite

    Note

    This sense of the verb is a product of the web, made from the lists of favourites that sites keep, and its forms are regular: she favourited the post, I'm favouriting everything, and its undo is unfavourite. On Twitter, until November 2015, people favourited tweets with a gold star, before the function was renamed like.

    Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 2 facts

    • Twitter users favourited tweets with a gold star until November 2015. en.wikipedia.org
    • Twitter renamed the favourite function like in November 2015. blog.x.com
  3. 6
    noun
    Short curls of hair left dangling over the temples, a fashion during the reign of Charles II.
    the Favourites hang loose upon the Temples with a languishing Lock in the middle
    1701, George Farquhar, Sir Harry Wildair

Practice

Can you tell the meanings of favourite apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.

Origin

English first recorded the word in the 1580s, borrowing Middle French favorit, from Italian favorito (“favoured, favourite”). Favorito is the past participle of favorire (“to favour”), formed from favore, which goes back to Latin favor (“goodwill, favour”), from faveō (“I favour”).