dearest

   Whereas ‘dear’ can be used in a friendly way, ‘dearest’ used alone or as part of a vocative group usually signifies an intimate endearment. In modern usage ‘darling’ would probably be preferred in both cases. Shakespeare has at least one example of ‘my dearest’, used by Leontes to his wife in The Winter’s Tale (l:ii): ‘Hermione, my dearest, thou never spok’st/To better purpose.’ More frequently he uses the word as an intensifier in expressions like: my dearest father, my dearest love, my dearest madam, my dearest master, my dearest coz, my dearest queen, my dearest sister, my dearest husband, all of which occur in the plays. (By comparison, Shakespeare makes relatively sparing use of ‘darling’, whether as a vocative or in third person reference.) Use of ‘dearest’ between lovers and intimate friends continues today, according to the evidence of modern novels such as The Bell, by Iris Murdoch, Brothers In Law, by Henry Cecil, The Country Girls, by Edna O’Brian, Kate and Emma, by Monica Dickens, The Masters, by C.P.Snow, Room at the Top, by John Braine, and many others. By the nineteenth century, however, ‘dearest’ appears to have been considerably watered down in meaning. Thackeray observes wryly, in The Newcomes.

   Miss Ethel and my wife were now in daily communication, and “my-dearesting” each other with that female fervour which, cold men of the world as we are - not only chary of warm expressions of friendship, but averse to entertaining warm feelings at all we surely must admire in persons of the inferior sex, whose loves grow up and reach the skies in a night; who kiss, embrace, console, call each other by Christian names, in that sweet, kindly sisterhood of Misfortune and Compassion, who are always entering into partnership here in life.