bekanntest

Bekanntest is a grammatical form found in German, not a standalone modern word. It is rarely used in contemporary standard German and is mainly encountered in historical texts or certain dialects. The form is generally treated as a past-tense inflection, corresponding to a second-person singular subject in the simple past for verbs that carry a stem related to bekant- or kennt-, depending on the underlying verb.

In practice, bekanntest does not have a fixed, widely attested meaning by itself. German has many verbs that form the second-person singular preterite with the -test ending, and bekanntest is understood only in context as the inflected form of a specific verb. Because language change over time has produced different regular and irregular patterns, this particular form is not a productive or common part of modern standard usage. When modern speakers want to convey past tense in second person, they typically use other, more common conjugations or rephrase the idea.

Relation to other forms is important: bekanntest should not be confused with the adjective bekannt, meaning well-known, or with the superlative am bekanntesten (the most well-known). The appearance of bekanntest is therefore primarily of historical or philological interest, illustrating older or regional verb conjugation patterns rather than serving as a current lemmatized entry in German dictionaries.

See also: bekannt, bekanntmachen, bekanntgeben, am bekanntesten.