Speak good English: 'Comparison of adjectives'
So far, as far as comparison of adjectives is concerned, we have looked at what is meant when we say 'comparison of adjectives' and how different adjectives form their comparative and superlative degrees.
We have also seen that we, as speakers or writers, do not have the freedom to form the comparative and superlative degrees of adjectives the way we deem fit, but that we must go by the grammatically correct way.
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We have also learnt that we can't combine the two main ways of forming the comparative and superlative degrees of adjectives in one adjective as a way of putting emphasis on what we say or write, as in:
My sister is the most laziest person I've ever seen.
We said this is incorrect because the adjective lazy forms its comparative and superlative degrees by adding the letters -er and -est, respectively, to the positive degree and that is enough for whatever the degree of comparison we want to make.
We have also got to know that a few adjectives — gentle, clever are common — can form their comparative and superlative degrees in both ways: either by adding the letters -er and -est to the positive degree, respectively, or using the words more and most, respectively, as prefixes, as in:
Clever cleverer cleverest
Or
Clever more clever most clever
I would want to end the discussion on comparison of adjectives by drawing attention to the fact that there are some adjectives that do not, by their definition, lend themselves easily to comparison.
These adjectives include unique, special, perfect, extraordinary, extreme, dead, immaculate, excellent, etc.
The adjective unique means 'one of its kind', and that means that if we have two unique items or personalities, it is improper to say that one is more unique than the other.
In the same way, if two exercises are marked by a teacher who describes both as excellent, it will not be correct for that same teacher to say that one of the exercises is more excellent than the other.
