nearest

1. 1
   adjective

   Superlative of near.

   We stopped at the nearest town to refuel.

   Her desk was the nearest to the door.

   Note

   The regular superlative of a short adjective: near, nearer, nearest, built with -est rather than with most. It keeps the full range of near, so it can rank closeness in kinship or time as well as in space, as in the nearest relative or the nearest date. One fixed pattern is worth knowing: to the nearest names the unit a figure is rounded to, as in a cost given to the nearest 50 dollars.

2. 2
   preposition

   Closest to a particular place, person, or thing in distance.

   She parked nearest the entrance to avoid the rain.

   Of all the cabins, ours was nearest the lake, so we heard the loons every night.

   Note

   Here the superlative takes an object directly, with no to in between: the planet nearest the Sun, or the point of the trunk nearest the peg in Edgar Allan Poe's The Gold-Bug (1843). The phrase usually follows the noun it picks out, or comes after a verb such as sit or park. Placed before a noun, as in the nearest town, the word is acting as the plain adjective instead.

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