silliest

1. 1
   adjective

   Superlative of silly.

   The committee picked the silliest costume for the prize.

   Her silliest excuse yet involved a runaway hamster.

   Note

   A superlative with a long family history behind it. Before -est, the y of silly turns to i, as in happiest. The base word once meant good, pious, even holy in Scottish use. In rare Northern English and Scottish literary use it still means innocent, especially of lambs and sheep. The superlative now reaches for foolishness, or for size that is absurd.

2. 2
   adverbdialectal

   Superlative of silly, used adverbially to describe the manner of an action; informal or dialectal.

   Of all the contestants, she behaved silliest on stage.

   He danced silliest of the whole troupe, tripping over his own feet for laughs.

   Note

   The superlative of a flat adverb: silly itself can mean "in a silly manner," but only in colloquial and regional speech. Silliest inherits that informality, so it suits talk and dialogue more than careful prose, where most sillily or a rephrasing is safer. It shares its spelling with the adjective superlative, and its position after a verb is what marks it as an adverb.

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