What do you call this part-of-speech called?


What is this  ~est+(word) sentence part called?


... is the highest-efficiency washing machine.

...is the highest-earning celebrity in the country.

... is the highest-paid baseball player in the world.

... is the highest-grossing movie of the year.

asked Mar 18 '14 at 08:16 girapola New member

1 answer


I have seen them called one-thought adjectives, compound adjectives, and compound modifiers. The construction is an adjective combined with a noun or participle used as a noun.  These two words then act as a single adjective to modify a noun.


Here is an explanation of the use of a hyphen I copied from the National Geographic style manual.  Other style manuals may have different guidlines.

A compound with an ordinal, a comparative, or a superlative is not hyphenated except to prevent ambiguity:
fifth largest city
farthest reaching trade
the best known person
the first ever race

second-growth timber third-ranked convention city best-selling novel faster than normal ship

link comment edited Mar 18 '14 at 11:28 Lewis Neidhardt Grammarly Fellow

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