A comparison of an adjective is made with -er or with more, and books say that short words take -er and long words take more. Counting the parts of the word makes that exact. On the 367 comparisons in the novel, the rule is right on 337. Reading the 30 it gets wrong shows what an old text does that a modern one does not.
Core ideas
Three ideas. The third is where the 30 wrong forms are.
A part is one beat of a word, built round a vowel sound: big has one, happy two, beautiful three. The lab takes the count from CMUdict, a dictionary of sounds. Word Stress goes further into parts; here you only need to count them.
In the novel, adjectives of three parts give 18 forms and none takes -er or -est. Adjectives of four parts or more give 10 forms with the same result. One part goes the other way: 268 forms with -er or -est and only 2 with more or most.
The novel gives 54 forms of two parts an ending and 15 a more. The rule takes adjectives of two parts ending in -y and sends the rest to more, and nearly all of its mistakes are here.
The material
30 of the novel's 367 forms break rule A. They come in three kinds.
The rule most books give is about size: short words take -er and long words take more. It is a good start, and it leaves one question open. How short is short? Pleasant and handsome are both eight letters and two parts, and the novel puts -er on both.
Count parts instead of letters. Big has one part, happy two, beautiful three. The rule then has three lines. One part takes -er and -est. Two parts ending in -y take them too, with the y changed to i. Everything else takes more and most.
The lab holds 367 comparisons from Pride and Prejudice. Rule A is right on 337, which is 91.8%. The table of parts shows why it works so well. Of the forms of one part, 268 take an ending and 2 take more. Of the forms of three parts and longer, none take an ending: 18 and 10 take more. The only place the two choices both occur in numbers is two parts, 54 with an ending and 15 with more.
Adjectives of two parts are the whole difficulty. Rule A sends only those ending in -y to an ending, and the novel gives an ending to far more: 54 of its 69 forms of two parts. 22 of the 30 wrong forms are this. They belong to ten adjectives: handsome, pleasant, common, gentle, minute, narrow, noble, quiet, severe and stupid. Some of the ten are still good English with an ending: quieter, narrower, gentler. A modern writer would give handsome and pleasant more and most. The lab cannot sort the two groups, because the sort is a judgement about how English sounds now; the novel is not wrong, it is 1813.
Rule B tries to catch some of them by also giving an ending to two parts that end in -ow, -le or -er. It moves four forms, gentlest, narrowest, nobler and noblest, and the score goes from 337 to 341 of 367, or 92.9%. That is a rule built to fit the novel. The other 18 forms end in -e, -t, -n and -d, and no short ending covers them.
Three are oftener, which is an adverb: the rule is for adjectives, and these lines are outside it. Five go the other way. More angry, more likely and most likely are words of two parts ending in -y that the novel gives more, and more strange and most sure are words of one part that it gives more. Today more likely is the usual form, so that pair is a hole in the rule's -y line and not a fault in the novel.
The play has 49 forms. Rule A is right on 44, which is 89.8%, and rule B on 45, which is 91.8%. The misses are remotest twice, noblest, oftener and pleasanter, the same kinds as the novel. The two modern documents have 32 forms, and both rules are right on all 32. None of the 32 uses more or most. They are the Census Bureau story “U.S. Population Aging as Nation Turns 250” (2026) and the US Supreme Court opinion Stanley v. City of Sanford, 606 U.S. 46 (2025), with words such as older and earlier, so 32 right says that nothing in them breaks the rule. It does not say that a modern writer prefers more handsome.
Take the rule, use it on a word you have not met, and check an old form against its date before you copy it.
Interactive
The adjective's parts decide; the printed lines say how often that is right
| parts in the adjective | -er or -est used | more or most used |
|---|
Every sound, part count and strong part here is read from the first pronunciation in CMUdict, the Carnegie Mellon University Pronouncing Dictionary, which records American speech. Its licence asks that this notice travel with anything made from it:
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Method
Four steps, then one check.
Big has one. Happy has two. Beautiful has three.
Big becomes bigger and biggest. The last letter doubles here as it does in When the Last Letter Doubles.
Happy becomes happier and happiest.
More beautiful, most important. The adjective does not change.
The novel is from 1813. It writes handsomer and pleasanter. Today's writing, as the lab's modern lines show, keeps the rule above.
Count the parts, apply the rule, then look at the last line.
The last two lines are the largest group of misses. Of the 30 wrong forms, 22 are an adjective of two parts that the novel gives an ending: handsomest 4, pleasanter 4, handsomer 3, pleasantest 2, and one each of commonest, gentlest, minutest, narrowest, nobler, noblest, quieter, severest and stupider. Rule B moves four of them to the right side, those of gentle, narrow and noble, and its score is 341 of 367, or 92.9%. The rule that is right today for handsome and pleasant is more.
Of the other eight, three are oftener, an adverb, and the rule was not built for it. The last five go the other way: more angry, more likely and most likely are words of two parts ending in -y that the novel gives more, and more strange and most sure are words of one part that it gives more.
You should be able to count the parts, apply the rule to an adjective you have not seen, read the rule's score off every printed comparison, and name the adjectives of two parts that the novel gives -er that a modern writer would give more.
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