more stupid or stupider

Uriel   Sun Mar 25, 2007 8:50 am GMT
I've always heard and used "stupider" and "stupidest", and to my ears "more stupid" and "most stupid" sound much more awkward.

Some adjectives get to tack on -er and -est, and some have to rely on more and most -- who knows what logic, if any, is behind those choices?

Spaceflight says he's from Florida, by the way, and who knows where our "Guest" is from. Looks like stupider and stupidest are standard for the North American crowd, but not for the Brits.
SpaceFlight   Sun Mar 25, 2007 3:04 pm GMT
<<who knows where our "Guest" is from.>>

Lots of places as there are a lot of "Guests" here.
Kendra   Sun Mar 25, 2007 4:58 pm GMT
''Looks like stupider and stupidest are standard for the North American crowd, but not for the Brits.''

And then again, ''Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary'' is the most American of all British dictionaries. ;) It has stupider/stupidest, verbs with -ize...
Travis   Sun Mar 25, 2007 5:50 pm GMT
>>''Looks like stupider and stupidest are standard for the North American crowd, but not for the Brits.''

And then again, ''Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary'' is the most American of all British dictionaries. ;) It has stupider/stupidest, verbs with -ize...<<

The matter about -ize, though, is not that the OED and OALD have ever become more American in that regard, but rather that most of British society has moved *away* from -ize (which was definitely standard in written British English fifty years ago) and towards -ise, largely due to many British people today thinking that -ize is an "Americanism", while the OED and like have stayed put on insisting that -ize is standard.
Liz   Mon Mar 26, 2007 8:08 am GMT
<<>>As far as the forms "more stupid" and "the most stupid" are concerned, there is a tendency towards the use of analytic forms instead of synthetic forms (if I´m not mixing up the two terms). However, it´s Global English, not British, American, Australian etc.<<

The matter is that in contexts like this we are generally not concerned with "Global English", as linguistics generally studies languages as spoken by native speakers, not non-native usages (even though sociolinguistics may study such).>>

Exactly. That´s why I said it´s Global English and not a native variety.