Once you know the comparative is just mai + adjective, the superlative is one short step away: put a little article in front of mai, and "taller" (mai înalt) becomes "the tallest" (cel mai înalt). That article — cel in its four forms cel / cea / cei / cele — is the heart of the Romanian superlative, and it is exactly where English speakers stumble. English marks "the best" with the invariable word the. Romanian marks "the best" with an article that agrees in gender and number with the noun: cel mai bun elev, cea mai bună elevă, cei mai buni elevi, cele mai bune eleve. Forget the article, or get its form wrong, and the superlative collapses.
There are two superlatives to keep apart. The relative superlative ranks something against a set ("the tallest in the class") and needs cel mai. The absolute superlative simply says the quality is extreme, with no set to compare against ("extremely tall"), and uses foarte or extrem de. We take them in turn.
The relative superlative: cel/cea/cei/cele + mai + adjective
The formula is cel-article + mai + adjective, where the adjective still agrees with its noun and the cel article agrees too. Everything lines up in the same gender and number.
| Masculine | Feminine | |
|---|---|---|
| Singular | cel mai înalt (the tallest) | cea mai înaltă (the tallest) |
| Plural | cei mai înalți (the tallest) | cele mai înalte (the tallest) |
E cel mai înalt băiat din clasă.
He's the tallest boy in the class.
Maria e cea mai frumoasă fată de aici.
Maria is the most beautiful girl here.
Ăștia sunt cei mai buni prieteni ai mei.
These are my best friends.
Sunt cei mai scumpi pantofi pe care i-am cumpărat vreodată.
They're the most expensive shoes I've ever bought.
For inferiority — "the least X" — slot in mai puțin: cel mai puțin + adjective. It is less common in speech but perfectly standard.
E varianta cea mai puțin costisitoare dintre toate.
It's the least costly option of all.
Marking the comparison set: din / dintre
To name the group something is "best in" or "tallest of," Romanian uses din before a singular collective (a place, a group treated as a whole) and dintre before a plural set of countable members. English uses in and of somewhat interchangeably here; Romanian draws the line by what follows.
E cel mai bun din clasă.
He's the best in the class.
E cea mai bună dintre toate candidatele.
She's the best of all the candidates.
Ziua de azi a fost cea mai frumoasă din toată vacanța.
Today was the most beautiful day of the whole holiday.
When the noun comes first: double marking
If the noun is already present and definite, the cel article still appears, sandwiched between the noun and the superlative phrase — and the noun keeps its own definite ending. This "double determination" feels redundant to English speakers but is obligatory: elevul cel mai bun ("the best student"), literally "the-student the most good."
Elevul cel mai bun din an a primit o bursă.
The best student in the year got a scholarship.
Au ales soluția cea mai simplă, ca de obicei.
They chose the simplest solution, as usual.
This is closely tied to the broader life of the cel article — see The Adjectival Article cel/cea + Adjective and The cel Buffer Article.
The absolute superlative: foarte / extrem de + adjective
The absolute superlative makes no comparison at all — it just turns the quality up to its maximum. The default and by far the most common marker is foarte ("very"). For a stronger, more emphatic reading, Romanian reaches for extrem de, nespus de, deosebit de, or tare (the last one informal). Critically, none of these takes the cel article — there is no ranking, so there is no article.
Mâncarea a fost foarte bună, mulțumim!
The food was very good, thank you!
E un apartament extrem de scump pentru zona asta.
It's an extremely expensive apartment for this area.
A fost nespus de drăguț din partea ta.
That was incredibly kind of you. (literary/emphatic)
E tare obosit, lasă-l să doarmă.
He's really tired, let him sleep. (informal)
Quick reference
| Type | Pattern | Example | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Relative (superiority) | cel/cea/cei/cele mai + adj. | cel mai bun | the best |
| Relative (inferiority) | cel/cea/cei/cele mai puțin + adj. | cea mai puțin scumpă | the least expensive |
| Absolute | foarte / extrem de + adj. | foarte bun | very / extremely good |
| Comparison set | din (collective) / dintre (members) | cel mai bun din clasă | the best in the class |
Common Mistakes
Don't drop the cel article — mai bun alone means "better," not "the best":
❌ E mai bun jucător din echipă.
Incorrect — this says 'a better player'; the superlative needs the article: cel mai bun.
✅ E cel mai bun jucător din echipă.
He's the best player on the team.
Don't leave the cel article in the masculine when the noun is feminine:
❌ Maria e cel mai bună din clasă.
Incorrect — feminine noun needs the feminine article: cea mai bună.
✅ Maria e cea mai bună din clasă.
Maria is the best in the class.
Don't get the plural article wrong — masculine plural is cei, feminine plural is cele:
❌ Sunt cele mai buni elevi.
Incorrect — masculine plural 'elevi' needs 'cei', not 'cele'.
✅ Sunt cei mai buni elevi.
They're the best students.
Don't stack the relative and absolute superlatives together:
❌ E cel mai foarte frumos loc din oraș.
Incorrect — use either 'cel mai frumos' (the most beautiful) or 'foarte frumos' (very beautiful), never both.
✅ E cel mai frumos loc din oraș.
It's the most beautiful place in the city.
Don't forget the adjective itself still agrees with its noun:
❌ Astea sunt cele mai scump bilete.
Incorrect — the adjective agrees with 'bilete' (neuter, feminine-pattern plural) → scumpe.
✅ Astea sunt cele mai scumpe bilete.
These are the most expensive tickets.
Key Takeaways
- The relative superlative is cel/cea/cei/cele + mai + adjective; the cel article must agree with the noun, unlike invariable English the.
- Use din for a collective set ("in the class") and dintre for a plural set of members ("of all the candidates").
- A pre-positioned definite noun triggers double determination: elevul cel mai bun.
- The absolute superlative is foarte / extrem de + adjective and takes no cel article.
- Never combine cel mai with foarte — pick one superlative strategy.
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Start learning Romanian→Related Topics
- The Comparative (mai, mai puțin, la fel de)A2 — How Romanian builds all comparatives analytically with mai, and how the than-word splits into decât (for inequality) and ca (for equality).
- The Adjectival Article cel/cea + AdjectiveB1 — How cel/cea/cei/cele — Romanian's third article type — links a definite noun to a following adjective, nominalizes adjectives, and powers epithets and the superlative.
- Irregular Comparison (bun, rău, mult)B1 — Why Romanian adjectives have essentially no suppletive comparatives — bun → mai bun, not a separate word — and where the only suppletion-like cases (the adverbs) actually live.
- The cel Buffer Article in Complex PhrasesB2 — How cel/cea/cei/cele re-marks definiteness on a modifier that has become detached from its noun — omul cel bătrân ('the old man'), the ordinals cel de-al doilea ('the second'), counting phrases cei trei muschetari ('the three musketeers'), and epithets Ștefan cel Mare ('Stephen the Great'). cel is the buffer that reactivates 'the' on a separated adjective, ordinal, or numeral.
- Intensifying Adjectives (foarte, tare, prea)A2 — Degree modifiers that strengthen or temper an adjective — foarte (very), tare (very, colloquial), prea (too), destul de (quite), cam (rather), atât de (so) — all invariable and placed before the adjective.
- Mood After Superlatives and Restrictive AntecedentsC1 — After a superlative (or singurul, primul, ultimul) followed by a relative clause, Romanian chooses mood by whether the referent is asserted as real or merely sought: indicative for a known fact (Cel mai bun film pe care l-am văzut), conjunctiv for a hypothetical or sought-after one (Caut cel mai bun preț care să existe). This extends the real-vs-sought logic of relative clauses into superlatives, with minimal pairs and the singurul/unicul rule.