Degree of Adjectives

Adjectives  are words that modify, describe, or identify nouns and pronouns or add something to the meaning of the noun. 

Example:

• Hot tea.
• Cold weather.
• Beautiful dress.
• Long frock.
• Black pant.

In the above examples, hot, cold, beautiful, long, and black are adjectives that modify or describe the nouns. 

Sometimes modifiers are needed to compare two or more things, qualities, or actions. Such comparative modifiers are called the degree of adjectives. Degrees show the strength or intensity of an adjective.

There are three degrees of adjectives.

1. Positive 
2. Comparative
3. Superlative 

Example:

Positive degree 

Positive adjectives are used to describe or modify the noun or pronoun. They are not used to compare the noun with another.

Example:

• Ali is heightened.
• Burj Khalifa is a tall building.
• Your dress is beautiful. Sara’s bottle is too heavy to carry.
• Your hair color is amazing.
• You run fast.

In all of the above examples, the adjectives, tall, beautiful, heavy, amazing, fast are only describing and modifying the nouns.

Comparative degree

The second degree of an adjective is a comparative degree. It is used to compare two nouns or pronouns. You can describe, modify or qualify a noun by comparing it to another noun.

Words like ‘than’ or ‘to’ are used after an adjective to compare one noun/pronoun to another.

Example:

• Ali is taller than Yusra.
• Her sister is prettier than her.
• My dress is more beautiful than yours.
• His cat is more loving than his dog.
• A car is more comfortable than the bus.

Superlative degree

The superlative degree is used to describe, modify, quantify a noun or pronoun by comparing it to a group of nouns or pronouns. we always use the article ‘the’ before the superlative degree of an adjective. ‘Of’ and ‘in’ are used after the superlative degree.

A superlative degree shows the highest intensity of one noun as compared to other nouns. It shows that one thing is superior to others in many aspects.

Example :

• My bag is the heaviest of all bags in the class.
• Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system.
• I am the laziest person in my family.
• My sister is the sharpest person in our siblings.
• He is the most handsome guy in our class.

Rules for formation of comparative and superlative degrees of adjective.

As you can see, that, positive, comparative, and superlative degrees of adjectives differ in their spellings. Some of the comparative degrees are formed by adding -er , some are taking -ier.

 So all of them do not follow one specific rule. There are several rules to form a comparative and superlative degree of an adjective. Some of them are discussed below.

One syllable adjective

One syllable adjectives are those short words that contain only vowel sound. Such as small, new, deep, fast. One syllable words can either end in -e, or some cam end in constants, so there are three rules to make comparative or superlative forms of such words.

You can form comparative and superlative forms of one-syllable adjectives by adding -er for comparative degree and -est for the superlative degree.

If the adjective ends in -e, add -r for the comparative form and -est for the superlative form.

If the adjective ends with a constant and a vowel before it, just double the consonant and add -er for the comparative form and -est for the superlative form.

Two or more syllabic adjectives 

Two syllabic adjectives are those words that have two or more vowel sounds in them, such as thoughtful, careless, peaceful, etc. There are some rules for such syllable adjectives.

With most of the two or more syllable adjectives, we add 'more' to form comparative and 'most' to form the superlative.

If the two or more syllable adjective ends in -y, change -y into -i and add -er to form comparative and -est to form superlative.

If the two or more syllable adjective ends in -er, -le, or -ow, add -er to form comparative and -est to form superlative.

Irregular comparative and superlative forms 

Some adjectives have irregular comparative and superlative forms such as:

Note:  There are some two-syllable adjectives that two follow two rules. Their comparative and superlative form can be formed by adding -er and -est or adding more and most.

As-As or like 

You can also use as-as structure or like to compare things of the same proportion.

Example:

• Zainab is as smart as her mother.
• Zainab is smart, like her mother.
• He is as clever as his friend.
• He is clever, like his friends.

Conclusion:
In this lesson, you learned about the degree of adjectives, which are positive, comparative, and superlative. You have to use ‘the’ before superlative adjective no matter what. You learned that you could also use as-as structure to compare things of the same proportion.