Adverb Unequal Comparisons
Adverbs can be used to show a comparison between two subjects’ actions. There are two main forms of adverbs when discussing comparisons: Comparative, which compares between two subjects; as well as Superlative, which is used when comparing three or more subjects. An example would be the word “slow”. The comparative form of “slow” would be “slower”, which states that one subject is doing something slower than another. The superlative form of “slow” would be “slowest”, which states that one subject is doing something slower than the other two or more subjects.
Adverbs can be used to compare and contrast this similar action. The comparative form of a word is used to compare two actions, and the superlative form of a word is used to refer to one in a group of three or more that is the outstanding example of the action. When we’re dealing with one syllable adverbs, we use the suffix er or est, or we use the words less or least.
Say we have the word late. To get to the comparative form of the word late we just add the suffix er to make it later. If we have two people and one person is late by an hour and the other person is late by two hours, we refer to the person late by two hours as being the later one.
Then if we have three or more people and one person is late by three hours, we refer to them as being the latest person, that’s a superlative form latest. We’re just adding these suffixes and really and later we’re just adding r, and the latest we’re just adding st because we already had e from late.
Now, to look at this and a more negative sense, you could use the words less or least. You could refer to one person as being less late and another person is being at least late. Now, when you have an advert with two or more syllables, you don’t use a suffix anymore you just use the words more or most, or less or least.
We have the word carefully and if two people both do something carefully you would say that one person did it more carefully. You could also say that one person did it less carefully depending on how you want to look at it. Then also with the superlative form if you have three or more you would refer to one person is doing it the most carefully.
Then you can refer to the person who wasn’t very careful as being the as doing something the least carefully. Now, we do a somebody called regular adverbs and what I mean by irregular is that they’re irregular in the way you form the comparative and superlative forms of the adverb.
For example, we have the word well. Now, the comparative form of the word well is better, and the superlative form is the best. As you can see, better and best aren’t -in any way- in any way close to the word well, so you just have to be familiar with using regular adverbs and be familiar with how to form the comparative and superlative forms of those words.
Again, adverbs can be used to compare and contrast dissimilar actions. We use the comparative form when we’re comparing to actions, and we use this superlative form when we’re comparing three or more actions.