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:
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Need I explain to the inhabitants of England, for whom I chiefly write, how extreme are those sufferings, and how great the costliness of that old age which is unable in any degree to supply its own wants? Such old age should not, we Britannulists maintain, be allowed to be.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“In comparison to the French Revolution, the American Revolution has come to seem a parochial and rather dull event. This, despite the fact that the American Revolution was successful—realizing the purposes of the revolutionaries and establishing a durable political regime—while the French Revolution was a resounding failure, devouring its own children and leading to an imperial despotism, followed by an eventual restoration of the monarchy.”
—Irving Kristol (b. 1920)