When we describe the things around us, we often make comparisons. For example, a lion is a big cat. When we see a rhino sitting next to a lion, we might say that the rhino is bigger than the lion due to its size. Later on during our safari, we see an elephant, and we know that it is the biggest animal we are likely to see due to its massive size.
If you’re the king of the grammar jungle, you already know that we use adjectives like the words big, bigger, and biggest to modify and describe nouns and pronouns. When we make comparisons, we use special types of adjectives called comparative adjectives and superlative adjectives. But what is the difference between these two? Is one better than the other? And which kind of adjective is best to use in our sentences? We can’t settle this adjective popularity contest right now but we can compare these two types of adjectives to learn when and how to use them.
Both comparative adjectives and superlative adjectives are formed from the positive form of an adjective (the “basic” form you’ll see if you look up an adjective in our amazing dictionary). In general, comparative adjectives end in -er or use the words more or less, while superlative adjectives end in -est or use the words most and least. For example, smaller is a comparative adjective and smallest is a superlative adjective. As another example, more determined is a comparative adjective and most determined is a superlative adjective.
Both of these types of adjectives are used in comparisons of people and/or things. Comparative adjectives are used to compare two people or things and superlative adjectives are used to compare more than two people or things. For example:
We will explore more specific ways that we use comparative and superlative adjectives in the PPT, but this is the main difference to keep in mind between these two types of adjectives.