Degree - Definition and Examples

The word degree is from the Latin de-  (down)   gradus  (a step). In English grammar, degree is one of three forms used in the qualitative comparison of adjectives and adverbs: The positive, or base form modifies a subject but isnt being compared to anything else in terms of quality.Example sentence: I have a smart dog. Here, the adjective smart simply describes the dog as being intelligent.The comparative compares one degree to another in terms of quality.Example sentence: My dog is smarter than many of his breed. In this sentence, the subject modified by the adjective smarter is superior to the subject modified by the base form (the smart dog).The superlative compares the degree against others and declares itself superior.Example sentence: My dog, Homer, is the smartest dog that ever lived! This dog is smarter than both the smart and smarter dog—or any other dog, for that matter—at least according to his owner. Creating Degree For almost all one-syllable adjectives, as well as some two-syllable adjectives, -er is added  to the base to form the comparative, and -est to form the superlative, however, this is not always the case. Common adjectives with irregular comparative and superlative forms include the following: good, better, bestbad, worse, worstmany, more mostlittle, less, least Most adjectives consisting of two or more syllables do not accept inflectional morphemes to indicate degree, relying instead on words rather than morphological suffixes to indicate the comparative (e.g. more visionary) and superlative (most reluctant). While in some languages, the declension of both adjectives and nouns can be determined via inflection to indicate gender, number, and case, there are only two possible inflections for adjectives in English: the comparative and the superlative. Examples and Observations Every day was a happy day, and every night was peaceful.(From Charlottes Web by E.B. White) This was a brighter,  happier day. We were all together and we were going to stay that way.(From  A Dog Called Perth by Peter Martin) This is the  happiest day  of my life, because today I have fallen in love.(From The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory)   The kids marvel at the rolling brown field, where a handful of sheep graze undisturbed by automobiles or shopping centers—a reminder of what seems a simpler,  more peaceful place  and time.(From Marin: The Place, the People by Jane Futcher) Im alone in the  most peaceful place  in the world. Well, maybe not the  most peaceful place, as a monastery in the Alps where the monks have all taken a vow of silence and just make cheese all day might be a smidge quieter, but still its very peaceful.(From The Book of Jane by Anne Dayton  and May Vanderbilt) Poverty makes you  sad  as well as  wise.(From The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht) My father went back to the tailoring business, a  sadder and wiser  man. No, not wiser—just sadder, for his thirteen dollars was gone forever.(From Groucho and Me by Groucho Marx)   For of all  sad  words of tongue and pen,The  saddest  are these: It might have been!(From Maud Muller by John Greenleaf Whittier) Imagination is  more important  than knowledge.(From a 1929 interview with Albert Einstein in The Saturday Evening Post) It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.†(From A Case of Identity by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) Sources Klammer, Thomas P. et al., Analyzing English Grammar, Fifth Edition. Pearson, 2007