best vs superlative

best

adj
  • Most superior; most favorable. 

  • Most; largest. 

adv
  • To the most advantage; with the most success, cause, profit, benefit, or propriety. 

noun
  • The person (or persons; or thing or things) that is (are) most excellent. 

  • The supreme effort one can make, or has made. 

  • One's best behavior. 

verb
  • Had best. 

  • To surpass in skill or achievement. 

  • To beat in a contest. 

superlative

adj
  • Exceptionally good; of the highest quality; superb. 

  • Of or relating to a superlative. 

noun
  • The extreme (e.g. highest, lowest, deepest, farthest, etc) extent or degree of something. 

  • An adjective used to praise something exceptional. 

  • The form of an adjective that expresses which of several items has the highest degree of the quality expressed by the adjective; in English, formed by appending "-est" to the end of the adjective (for some short adjectives only) or putting "most" before it. 

How often have the words best and superlative occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )