Better, best: the irregular comparatives

Two spelling families

Adjectives in -er add -rimus to the masculine nominative, not to the stem. Their comparative is regular:

Six adjectives in -lis take -limus:

Six, not all of them. Utilis gives utilissimus and fidelis gives fidelissimus: the list is closed, and treating it as a rule about every -lis adjective produces Latin no Roman wrote.

The five irregular families

You know half of this table already as ordinary words: plus, minus, magis and maxime are comparatives and superlatives that became words in their own right, as English better and worst did. Spanish and French kept the irregulars: melior became mejor and meilleur.

Plus in the singular is a neuter noun that takes a partitive genitive, like nihil novi:

• plus vini - more wine (literally more of wine)

In the plural it is an ordinary adjective: plures homines, more people; genitive plural plurium.