outmost

Pluraloutmosts

1. 1
   adjective

   Superlative of outer.

   The outmost ring of the old fortress had long since crumbled.

   Engineers reinforced the outmost panels of the spacecraft against the heat.

   Note

   A superlative built directly from out plus -most, not from outer, though it serves as outer's top degree. Because it is already a superlative, it never takes more or most. It suits spatial extremes such as the farthest ring, edge or tract from a center. Augusta Webster uses it in her 1866 translation of The Prometheus Bound of Æschylus, with "earth's outmost tracts" naming the world's remotest edges.

2. 2
   noun

   The part or thing that lies farthest from the center or the inside.

   Among the castle's defenses, the outmost was the first to fall.

   The diagram labels each layer, from the core to the outmost.

   Similaroutermost

   Oppositeinnermost, inmost

   Note

   Here the superlative adjective stands on its own and names the thing itself. It typically picks out one member of a series of layers, walls or rings, the one at the far edge. As a noun it can also be counted and pluralized, as outmosts, when several such extremes are in view.

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