Superlative adverbs

Superlative adverbs.

Let’s think first about adverbs that form their comparative form with _er and their superlative with _est. Such adverbs include loud, louder, loudest or quick, quicker, quickest. For such adverbs:

We don’t normally use the definite article if the comparison is with a person’s own performance.

We do normally use the definite article if the comparison is with other people.

So “… he spoke loudest …” means that this was the loudest that he had ever spoken.

And “… he spoke the loudest …” means that he spoke more loudly than anyone else in the room.

In full, we might say: “He spoke loudest when he was excited”. And: “He spoke the loudest of all the people I met that day”.

Some other examples:

“She ran quickest last year” – meaning that she ran more quickly last year than she did this year or in any previous years.

“She ran the quickest last year” – meaning that she ran more quickly than anyone else.

“He works hardest in the mornings” – meaning he works harder in the mornings than he does at any other time of day.

“He works the hardest in the mornings” – meaning that, in the mornings, he works harder than anyone else.

But most adverbs form their comparatives by using “more” and their superlatives by using “most”. Examples include carefully, more carefully, most carefully or beautifully, more beautifully, most beautifully.

The same general principle might apply here. So, perhaps:

“They sang most beautifully last week” might mean that last week they sang more beautifully than they had at any other time.

“They sang the most beautifully last week” might mean that last week they sang more beautifully than anyone else.

But this doesn’t sound very good. It would be better to use “They sang beautifully” simply to mean that their singing was exceptionally beautiful. Then we could stick to “Last week they sang more beautifully than they had at any other time”, and “Last week they sang more beautifully than anyone else”.

Then there are the irregular adverbs such as good, better, best.

We could say: “They performed best” or “They performed the best”.

In this case, both sentences are grammatically acceptable and both seem to mean that they performed better than anyone else. If we want to compare their performance with their own previous performance we might prefer to say “They performed their best”.

We might also want to argue about the exact grammatical function of “the best” in “They performed the best”. Is it actually serving as an adverb here or as something else? A noun, perhaps?

All, or maybe nearly all, the examples here are what some people call “adverbs of manner”. There are other sorts of adverbs such as adverbs of place (including upstairs, somewhere, outdoors), adverbs of degree (including frequently, partially, wholly), adverbs of duration (including already, yet, still). These don’t have comparative or superlative forms. You can find more about adverbs here.

As always – and most importantly – we should remember that there are exceptions to every rule, that the rules change, and that people don’t necessarily follow the rules anyway. As we get more familiar with a language we learn to recognise what “sounds right”. This might often be different from what the “rules” tell us.

Find out about comparative and superlative adjectives here.

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_{Superlative adverbs – posted by Graham.}