The Ultimate Guide To Superlatives In Spanish

Do you ever wish you could become the best Spanish speaker of all? Perhaps the greatest of all time…

One thing that will help you reach that goal is learning about superlatives in Spanish! Superlatives allow you to express your unapologetic opinions in the loudest way possible. You just saw a couple of English examples in the intro – “best” and “greatest”.

You may turn some heads or even outrage a few, but that’s what expressing yourself freely is all about! And what better way to do so than doing it in Spanish?

Keep reading if you want to learn about how to use superlatives in everyday conversations, different ways of using them and many example phrases to practise with!

If you prefer watching videos to reading, hit play on the video below from the StoryLearning Spanish YouTube channel. Thanks to teacher Beatriz's story, you'll expand your knowledge of Spanish superlatives and learn about Latin America's greatest wonders!

What Are Superlatives In Spanish?

Superlatives (known as superlativos in Spanish) are a type of word or phrase structure that showcases the highest degree an adjective can have.

In other words, we use them when we want to express the intensity something or someone has regarding a specific aspect, for example, when we say Lionel Messi es el mejor jugador de fútbol del mundo (Lionel Messi is the best football player in the world).

This means that the Spanish superlative of adjectives is perfect for passionate people who hold strong opinions about the things they love, like football fans!

If the person you are talking to knows who Messi is (they probably do), you can skip the clarification and just say Lionel Messi es el mejor del mundo. 

You can also say: Messi es un jugador buenísimo (Messi is an extremely good player). In this case, you aren’t mentioning a wider category or anything like that, so you use a different type of superlative with a special adjective. You'll learn more about that soon.

Of course you can use superlatives to talk about bad qualities: for example, someone who hates Messi could say Messi es malísimo (Messi is terrible). That’s still a superlative, because they're emphasising that Messi is a bad player.  

Comparatives And Superlatives In Spanish

Unlike comparatives in Spanish (in which two similar elements are compared regarding a shared quality), superlatives tend to highlight one part of the sentence to the category they belong in or that encompasses this first element.

In the example, Messi belongs to a category called “football players throughout the world”, and so it happens he is the best one of the lot.

However, if we say Lionel Messi es mejor que Cristiano Ronaldo (Lionel Messi is better than Cristiano Ronaldo), we're only comparing two elements.

The Structure Of Spanish Superlatives

Spanish superlative adjectives are divided into two types: relative and absolute. Let’s take a look at each one…

Relative Superlatives

We use relative superlatives to compare one or more elements with a group they belong to, in other words, when we want to highlight a link between them. The structure you’ll need is the following:

[DEFINITE ARTICLE + MÁS/MENOS + ADJECTIVE]

Here are some examples:

• Carla es la más inteligente de su escuela. (Carla is the smartest in her school.)
• Nosotros somos los menos capaces del grupo. (We are the least capable of the group.)
• ¿Brasil es el país más grande de América Latina? (Is Brazil the largest country in Latin America?)

As you can see, I've highlighted part of the phrase at the front and the verb ser before the structure I gave you, but the person can be omitted.

In the first example, that would be Es la más inteligente de la escuela. Then, there's the category to which the highlighted element belongs, introduced by the preposition de. However, we can also omit this section if we wanted to, like this: Es la más inteligente.

Of course, superlative clauses don’t only feature the verb ser: You can also find the verb tener, like in these sentences:

• Venezuela tiene la catarata más alta del mundo. (Venezuela has the tallest waterfall.)
• ¡Tienes la sonrisa más bonita de todas! (You have the prettiest smile of all!)
• No tienes el pelo más largo de tus amigas. (You don’t have the longest hair of your friends.)

Absolute Superlatives In Spanish

Then, we have the second type of superlatives: the absolutes.

You won't find a comparison of elements here, but a phrase that allows us to showcase that an adjective holds a great intensity or that the highlighted element has an intense quality on its own, not in comparison to a group.

You can create these type of sentences:

1. By placing the adverb muy before the adjective: Esta cama es muy grande (This bed is very big)
2. By adding the suffixes -ísimo and -érrimo: Estamos agotadísimos (We are very exhausted)

In general, most adjectives take the suffix -ísimo/a/os/as, but you will learn which one of these two options to use through practice. We can also make superlatives with the following prefixes:

• super-: supermal (super-bad)
• mega-: megapequeño (mega-small)
• hiper-: hiperasustada (hyper-scared)
• ultra-: ultraprocesado (ultra-processed)
• extra-: extragrande (extra-large)
• re-: redivertido (very fun)
• requete-: requetefácil (super-duper easy)

You can also create some superlative phrases with a totally different adjective. For instance, instead of saying muy bueno, you can just say óptimo (optimal); instead of muy malo, you can say pésimo (awful).

Here are a couple more options you can use:

• Muy pequeño → mínimo or diminuto (tiny)
• Muy grande → enorme or gigante (enormous)

Finally, you should keep an eye out for adjectives that don’t take a superlative prefix or suffix, because they are already expressing the highest degree of something, such as eterno (eternal), infinito (infinite) or principal (main).

Irregular Superlatives In Spanish

Just like what happens with comparative adjectives, there are a couple of superlatives that feature some irregularities. Let’s see which ones there are, shall we?

• Mejor (best) 
• Peor (worst)
• Mayor (oldest/highest)
• Menor (youngest/lowest)

Here are some example phrases to see how to use them in context:

• Mi hermana es la mejor cantante de la familia (My sister is the best singer in the family).
• ¡Eres lo peor que me ha pasado! (You are the worst thing that ever happened to me!).
• Susana es la mayor de las hermanas (Susana is the eldest sister).
• Los Wildcats son el equipo con el menor puntaje (The Wildcats are the team with the lowest score).

As you may have noticed, we need to use a definite article before the irregular superlative, just like we do with regular ones. Of course, we can use the plural variants of these superlatives, like this:

• Ellas son las mejores jugadoras del torneo (They are the best players of the tournament).
• Mi tía cocina los peores platos del mundo (My aunt cooks the worst dishes in the world).
• Pedro es uno de los mayores goleadores del partido (Pedro is one of the match’s highest scorers).
• Las gemelas son las menores de la familia (The twins are the youngest in the family).

Mastering Superlatives In Spanish

Congratulations! You're one step closer to becoming the best Spanish speaker that ever lived. Or at least an extremely good one! This article was just the beginning though. So, what's next?

The best way to master Spanish superlatives is to follow the rules of StoryLearning and read in Spanish at your level. As you read and listen to short stories in Spanish, you'll see superlatives again and again.

Before you know it, you'll be expressing strong opinions with ease in Spanish thanks to superlatives. And if you still need a bit of help to master superlatives or any other aspect of Spanish grammar, my course, Spanish Uncovered, can help. Try it free for 7-days.

Olly Richards

Creator of the StoryLearning® Method

Olly Richards is a renowned polyglot and language learning expert with over 15 years of experience teaching millions through his innovative StoryLearning® method. He is the creator of StoryLearning, one of the world's largest language learning blogs with 500,000+ monthly readers.

Olly has authored 30+ language learning books and courses, including the bestselling "Short Stories" series published by Teach Yourself.

When not developing new teaching methods, Richards practices what he preaches—he speaks 8 languages fluently and continues learning new ones through his own methodology.