Degree Of Comparison
Comparison is a feature in the grammar of most languages, whereby adjectives and adverbs are inflected or modified to produce forms which indicate the relative degree of the designated properties.
The grammatical category associated with comparison of adjectives and adverbs is degree of comparison. The usual degrees of comparison are the positive, which simply denotes a property (as with the English words big and fully); the comparative, which indicates greater degree (as bigger and more fully); and the superlative, which indicates greatest degree (as biggest and most fully). Some languages have forms indicating a very large degree of a particular quality (called elative in Semitic linguistics).
Read more about Degree Of Comparison: Formation of Comparatives and Superlatives, Comparative and Superlative Constructions, Usage When Considering Only Two Things, Rhetorical Use of Unbalanced Comparatives, Comparison in English
Famous quotes containing the words degree of, degree and/or comparison:
“A certain degree of miserey [sic] seems inseparable from a high degree of populousness.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“As to the bride, she is blithe as the month; if one can compare in any degree a weed of December, with the fragrance of May; for a weed in truth it is, and a weed not in its first prime.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)
“We teach boys to be such men as we are. We do not teach them to aspire to be all they can. We do not give them a training as if we believed in their noble nature. We scarce educate their bodies. We do not train the eye and the hand. We exercise their understandings to the apprehension and comparison of some facts, to a skill in numbers, in words; we aim to make accountants, attorneys, engineers; but not to make able, earnest, great- hearted men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)