English hasn't held on to very many inflections over the centuries, but in the realm of adjectives and adverbs, there are some extremely common ones. We like to compare this to that, and in doing so we employ endings that are attached to the ends of adjectives, namely “-er” and “-est,” as in tall, taller, tallest. These are called comparative endings. Many English adjectives (e.g., “beautiful”) use the words “more” and “most” to make the change. As you would expect, Latin uses endings.

There are three degrees of comparison. First is the positive degree, which is the regular form of an adjective. Next are the comparative and superlative degrees. Each of them has its own endings and special uses.

The comparative degree of adjectives does just what its name implies — it is used to make comparisons such as “Jeff is stronger than Pete.” In Latin, the comparative does a bit more. In fact, when you usually see it, it's doing something other than strict comparison.

You will be glad to know that comparatives are easy to form and there is only one way to do it, no matter which kind of adjective (i.e., first/second or third declension) it started out as.

To form a comparative, all you need is an adjective's stem (changed stem if it undergoes a stem change), plus -ior for the masculine or feminine nominative singular and -ius for the neuter. If you guessed that all comparatives are third declension adjectives of two terminations, you're right. There is a slight twist in that they decline with normal third declension noun endings.

Here is a full declension of a comparative:

Table 7-1 Comparative Degree Declension of the Adjective altus, -a, -um (“tall, deep”)

It is not correct to say that altior means “taller” and leave it at that. It can be like the English “taller,” but only if a direct comparison is being made.

More often, the comparison is made simply to what you might expect.

The word quam is used with adjectives and adverbs. It has different meanings depending on the degree of the adjective it is with. Examine the following examples and you will see.