The simple word, or positive, becomes [the] comparative by adding r or er; and the superlative by adding st or est, to the end of it.

But in a chaffing way he suggested that one might write a very humorous essay on the English character by taking as one's text that tall, stiff, and self-assertive letter 'I.' How far M. Zola actually carried his study of English I could hardly say, but during the last months of his exile he more than once astonished me by his knowledge of an irregular verb or of the correct comparative and superlative of an adjective.

But wait till we have our 'howl'!" What a "howl" was, superlative to "tree-toading," "owl-hooting," and other divertisements, did not appear at this time; for a young man did, approaching from the front of the hotel, and came up to the group on the piazza with the question, "At what time do we set off for Feather-Cap to-morrow?" "Oh, early, Mr. Scherman; by nine o'clock.

"If I am superlative in anything, 'its in my wines."

In fact I am so delighted that I am as full of superlatives as the Italian language.

Some grammarians, observing this, and knowing that the Romans often used their superlative in a sense merely intensive, as altissimus for very high, have needlessly divided our English superlative into two, "the definite, and the indefinite;" giving the latter name to that degree which we mark by the adverb very, and the former to that which alone is properly called the superlative.

Thou hast been a beautiful day-dream, posing or reclining, dancing, or swaying with grace superlative on thy restive steed.

8.Chief is from the French word chef, the head: chiefest is therefore no more a double superlative than headmost: "But when the headmost foes appeared.

He also stands superlative for the quality of three varieties of short stories, those of terror, beauty and ratiocination.

The common usage is, to construe the positive with as, the comparative with than, and the superlative with of.