Definition of "best-loved" [best-loved]

• Preferred above all others and treated with partiality (adjective)

WordNet. Princeton University. 2010.

• "Philip Kerr returns with his best-loved character, Bernie Gunther, in the fifth novel in what is now a series: a tight, twisting, compelling thriller that is firmly rooted in history."
• "I was twenty years old, she forgave me, and, because I was twenty years old, because I was naive — still deceived, but no longer abandoned — I thought myself to be the best-loved lover, and therefore the happiest of men."
• "It tipped its hat to the Old West's decline—in favor of outer-space fantasy—when Buzz Lightyear replaced Sheriff Woody as a boy's best-loved toy."