The degree of an adjective

You can modify an adjective to change to what degree that adjective describes a noun or pronoun. Have a look at this sentence:

A bear is a large land animal, a rhino is larger, but the largest is the elephant.

In this sentence, different degrees of the adjective ‘large’ are used to make comparisons between the sizes of animals. All adjectives have their normal form, like ‘large’ or ‘long’. This is known as the positive form of the adjective.

When you want to compare two things, like the size of a bear and a rhino, you can use the comparative degree of an adjective. The comparative form of ‘large’ is ‘larger’, so you could say something like:

A rhino is larger than a bear.

When you want to compare three or more things, however, you need to use the superlative form of an adjective - such as ‘largest’:

The elephant is the largest land animal.

In this sentence, the comparison is implied - it’s implied that I’m comparing the elephant to all other land animals.

A lot of adjectives form their comparative and superlative forms by adding ‘er’ and ‘est’ to the end of the normal adjective. However, there are some that are irregular and don’t follow any such rules:

Positive form	Comparative form	Superlative form
Some	More	Most
Bad	Worse	Worst
Old (as in people)	Older	Oldest
Good	Better	Best
Little (as in quantity)	Less	Least
Small (as in size)	Smaller	Smallest
Far	Further	Furthest

Click here to move on to the next topic: Comparative and superlative degree for multi-syllable adjectives