Latin Comparatives and Superlatives: altior, altissimus, melior, optimus

English has two ways of saying that one thing beats another. It sticks an ending on short words (tall, taller, tallest) and puts a separate word in front of long ones (beautiful, more beautiful, most beautiful). Latin only has the first. Every adjective in the language, however long, takes an ending.

That is the good news. The bad news is a handful of spelling families and four irregular sets, and the four irregular sets are the ones you meet every third sentence.

The regular pattern

Take the stem the way you always do: the genitive singular, minus its ending. Then:

Notice that the positive's declension is irrelevant. Altus is a bonus, bona, bonum adjective and fortis is a third-declension i-stem, and their comparatives are formed identically. The agreement article explains why the two families exist; comparison ignores the distinction entirely.

How the comparative declines, and the trap in it

The comparative is a third-declension consonant stem. Not an i-stem. Ever.

Compare that with fortis, which as a positive has ablative singular forti, genitive plural fortium and neuter plural fortia. Its comparative fortior has fortiore, fortiorum, fortiora. The same word behaves differently in its two degrees, and that is exactly the sort of thing that gets marked wrong in a translation.

The superlative is easy by comparison: altissimus, altissima, altissimum declines like bonus, and there is nothing else to say about it.

Two spelling families

Adjectives ending in -er build the superlative by adding -rimus to the nominative masculine, not to the stem. The comparative is regular.

pulcher gives pulchrior but pulcherrimus

miser gives miserior but miserrimus

acer gives acrior but acerrimus

celer gives celerior but celerrimus

Six adjectives in -lis take -limus: facilis, difficilis, similis, dissimilis, gracilis, humilis. So facillimus, simillimus, humillimus. Their comparatives are regular: facilior, similior.

Six. Not all of them. Nobilis gives nobilissimus, utilis gives utilissimus, fidelis gives fidelissimus. The -limus rule is a closed list and treating it as a general rule about -lis adjectives is a reliable way to write Latin that no Roman ever wrote.

The four irregular families

Here is the thing worth pausing on. You already own most of that table as vocabulary. Plus sits at rank 130 in this course, minus at 115, magis at 85, maxime at 141, summus at 294, proximus at 403, superior at 503. You learned them as ordinary words. They are comparatives and superlatives that got common enough to be treated as words in their own right, which is precisely what happened to English better and worst.

A few more of the same kind, where the positive has largely dropped out of use:

superus gives superior, higher, and summus or supremus, highest

inferus gives inferior and infimus

prope, near, gives propior and proximus

vetus, old, gives vetustior and veterrimus

plus is not an adjective in the singular

Plus is genuinely odd and worth ten seconds. In the singular it is a neuter noun taking a partitive genitive, exactly like the nihil novi and satis pecuniae constructions in the genitive article:

plus vini - more wine, literally more of wine

In the plural it goes back to behaving like a normal adjective: plures homines, more men; plura verba, more words; genitive plural plurium.

Making the actual comparison

Four constructions, and you need all four to read.

1. quam, with both things in the same case. This is the safe one and it is never wrong.

Rex est fortior quam dux. - The king is braver than the leader.

Both rex and dux are nominative. Whatever case the first thing is in, the second matches.

2. The ablative of comparison. Drop quam and put the second thing into the ablative.

Rex est fortior duce. - The king is braver than the leader.

Identical meaning, one word shorter, and very common in verse for exactly that reason. It is only available when the comparison would have been nominative or accusative, so quam remains your fallback. This is one more job for a case that already has plenty; the ablative article collects the rest.

3. quam plus a superlative: as X as possible.

quam celerrime - as fast as possible

quam plurimos milites - as many soldiers as possible

quam maximas copias - the largest forces he could manage

4. The ablative of degree of difference. How much bigger? Put the amount in the ablative.

multo maior - much greater

paulo minor - a little smaller

tanto fortior - so much the braver

What a comparative actually means

Take a side on this, because most beginners get it wrong and stay wrong: a Latin comparative with nothing to compare against does not mean taller. It means rather, quite, or too.

Mons altior est. - The mountain is rather high.

Verba graviora dixit. - He spoke somewhat harshly.

The superlative does the same thing. Vir fortissimus is in most contexts a very brave man, not the bravest man alive. Latin used one form for both jobs and let context sort it out. If you mechanically render every -ior as -er and every -issimus as -est your English comes out oddly absolute, and you will be translating claims the Latin never made.

The adverbs

Latin builds an adverb from an adjective with -e for the first and second declension (altus gives alte, longus gives longe) and -iter for the third (fortis gives fortiter, gravis gives graviter).

Comparing them is then unusually tidy:

• Comparative adverb = the neuter singular comparative. Always -ius. Altius, fortius, gravius, longius. No exceptions, including the irregulars: melius, peius, magis, minus, plus.
• Superlative adverb = the superlative adjective with -e. Altissime, fortissime, celerrime, facillime.

The irregular adverbs follow their adjectives, and again you already know several of them:

What to take away

• Stem plus -ior and -issimus, from the genitive stem, regardless of the positive's declension.
• Every comparative is a consonant stem: altiore, altiorum, altiora.
• -er adjectives take -rimus on the nominative. Exactly six -lis adjectives take -limus.
• Five irregular families, most of whose forms you already know as separate vocabulary.
• Quam plus a matching case, or a bare ablative. Quam plus a superlative means as X as possible.
• A comparative on its own means rather or too. A superlative on its own usually means very.
• The comparative adverb is the neuter comparative, always in -ius.

Next: infinitives and indirect statement, where Latin reports what someone said without using a word for that.