Double Comparatives: Why “More Better” Is Wrong

A double comparative marks a comparison twice, and English allows only one marker per adjective. More better, most easiest and more taller are all the same error.

English gives you two ways to compare, and they are alternatives, not ingredients:

Use one or the other. Using both produces more taller, which says nothing extra – it simply breaks the rule.

Where the mistake comes from

Three situations produce it reliably.

Emphasis. A speaker wants to stress the comparison, and more feels like it adds weight: this one is more better. The fix is an intensifier that is allowed with comparatives – much better, far better, a lot better.

Irregular forms. Better and worse do not look like comparatives because they share no letters with good and bad, so more gets added to make the comparison visible. It is already there.

Uncertainty about the rule. With a two-syllable adjective where both forms exist, a writer hedges and uses both: more simpler. Pick one – simpler or more simple.

Fixing them

The historical note

Double comparatives were once perfectly standard. Shakespeare wrote “the most unkindest cut of all” in Julius Caesar, and nobody at the time considered it an error – the doubling was emphatic, exactly as modern speakers intend it. The rule against it was imposed by eighteenth-century grammarians who wanted English to behave more like Latin.

That history explains why the construction still feels natural to say. It does not make it acceptable in current writing, where it reads as a mistake rather than as emphasis.

Practice

Fix each sentence. Answers below.

1. This printer is more faster than the old one.
2. It was the most easiest exam I have taken.
3. Her second attempt was more better.
4. That is the most worst outcome available.
5. The new team is more friendlier than the last.

Answers

Checked against Merriam-Webster, the Chicago Manual of Style and the AP Stylebook. Spotted an error? Tell us — see our editorial policy.