“In the dialects [of English],” says Wright, “the comparative suffix -er and the superlative -est are added to practically all adjectives, polysyllabic as well as monosyllabic. More and most are as a rule only used to supplement the regular comparisons, as more beautifuller, more worst.”1 He adds betterer, betterest, bestest, worser, worsest, morer and mostest. Wyld, in his “History of Modern Colloquial English,”2 recalls Shakespeare’s most unkindest cut of all, and traces badder, more better, more surer, more gladder, more larger, more greater, more stronger, more fresher,3 most best, most bitterest, most hardest and most nearest to the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.4 Jespersen notes that “the natural tendency in colloquial speech is to use the superlative in speaking of two,” and that “this is found very frequently in good authors.” Russell Thomas assembles examples from Mallory, Pope, Boswell, Coleridge, Emerson, Melville and many others.5
In the American common speech such forms are very numerous, and Wentworth lists betterer and more betterer from Georgia and Alabama, more beautifuller from Pennsylvania, more better from the Ozarks and South Carolina, moreder from Nebraska, more hotter from Virginia, more resteder from Appalachia, more righter from New England, bestest from Mississippi, bestmost from Arkansas, mostest from Indiana, and leastest from Massachusetts, Alabama, Georgia and Newfoundland. The ascription of the military maxim, “Git thar fustest with the mostest men,” to the Confederate general, Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821–77), is probably apocryphal, but mostest is in everyday use today in his native wildwood. Adjectives not ordinarily subjected to the process are compared freely, e.g., onliest, fightinest, dancinest, shootinest, loviner, growed-uppest and tore-dowdest. All these are reported from the Ozarks by Randolph,1 and Wentworth adds examples from many other regions.2 From New Jersey a correspondent sends in the following dialogue:
A. Ain’t State street th’ main street ’n ’is ’ere town?
B. Sure.
A. Well, if Ahm comin’ down Warren an’ your’re comin’ through State on my lef’, then which is the mainer?3
The plain people pay no heed to the schoolma’am’s distinction between healthy and healthful, and prefer tasty to tasteful.4 In the phrase healthy respect the former is quite respectable. Of late there has been a strong tendency, especially in the field of victualling, to omit the -ed ending from adjectives, following the example of ice-cream, originally iced-cream.5 Examples: mash potatoes, hash-brown potatoes, whip cream.6 In Baltimore, in 1946, I saw a sign advertising Frostie, “an old-fashion root-beer.”7
1 English Dialect Grammar, p. 267.
2 p. 326.
3 P. A. Browne sends me a magnificent modern English example: “John is more taller than Kate than she is than Jim.”
4 For the transition period immediately preceding see Dr. Louise Pound’s dissertation, The Comparison of Adjectives in English in the XV and the XVI Century; Heidelberg, 1901.
5 The Use of the Superlative Degree for the Comparative, English Journal (College Edition), Dec., 1935, pp. 821–29. See also The Grammar of English Grammars, by Goold Brown; New York, 1858, p. 294.
1 The Grammar of the Ozark Dialect, American Speech, Oct., 1927, p. 9.
2 Such forms are often used by the literati for humorous effect. In Notes on the Vernacular, American Mercury, Oct., 1924, pp. 235–36, Louise Pound offers allrightest, nicerer, moderatest, far more superior, more outer, high-steppingest, goingest, orphanest, womanishest, outlandishest and pathetiker. In Washington is Like That, by W. M. Kiplinger; New York, 1942, the Capital is described as “the eatingest, drinkingest, gossipest place in the world.”
3 My debt here is to Mr. Harry Gwynn Morehouse, of Trenton.
4 The NED traces healthy in the sense of conducive to health to 1552, and shows that it was used by John Locke and John Wesley. It traces tasty to 1617 and provides examples from Goldsmith, Buckle, Hobhouse and Thackeray.
5 The NED traces ice-cream to 1769 and iced-cream to 1688.
6 I am indebted here to Mr. Douglas Leechman, of the National Museum of Canada, Ottawa.
7 The prevalence of incomplete comparatives in advertisements, e.g., “a better department-store” and “dresses for the older woman,” is discussed in The Rise of the Incomplete Comparative, by Esther K. Sheldon, American Speech, Oct., 1945, pp. 161–67.