Noun: favourite
| Singular | favourite |
| Plural | favourites |
Sample Sentences
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The teacher's favourite always went first.
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You were my favourite to win the spelling competition.
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She's the favourite, she'll probably be elected.
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Netherlands, one of the pre-tournament favourites, combined their undoubted guile, creativity, pace and attacking quality with midfield grit and organisation. [2012 June 9, Owen Phillips, “Euro 2012: Netherlands 0 – 1 Denmark”, in BBC Sport, archived from the original on 04 Nov 2016:]
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the Favourites hang loose upon the Temples with a languishing Lock in the middle [1701, George Farquhar, Sir Harry Wildair:]
Nouns inflected like favourite
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
Attested from the 1580s, borrowed from Middle French favorit, from Old French favorit or Italian favorito (“favoured, favourite”), past participle of Italian favorire (“to favor”), from favore, from Latin favor (“good will, favor”), from the verb faveō (“to favour”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₂weh₁yeti (“to be favourable to”), from the root Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₂- (“to shine, glow light”). Doublet of favori. See: Italian Nouns '
favorito', Italian Nouns '
favorire', Latin Nouns '
favor'.