Chapter 5: Adjectives, Adverbs, and Comparisons
Learning Objectives
- Place adjectives after the noun for period-appropriate emphasis, particularly in praise of a person's character.
- Use certain adjectives as adverbs, in the period manner, without the modern -ly ending.
- Form comparisons the eighteenth-century way, including uses that would be considered errors today.
How eighteenth-century speakers described things and compared them differs from modern usage in a few specific, learnable ways. None of these require you to sound stiff or foreign — they're small substitutions that season a sentence convincingly.
5.1 Adjectives After the Noun
Modern English almost always places adjectives before the noun they modify. Eighteenth-century speech had more room to place two or more adjectives after the noun instead, especially in admiring descriptions of a person's character:
He was a general wise and valiant. He is a man learned and religious. She is a woman modest, sensible, and prudent.
Save this construction for tributes and character sketches — describing a respected neighbor, a late spouse, or a public figure. It reads as slightly formal and complimentary rather than as everyday description.
5.2 Adjectives Doing an Adverb's Job
Grammarians of the period grumbled constantly about a habit they couldn't stamp out: using an adjective, without its -ly ending, to modify a verb or another adjective. Robert Lowth complained specifically about indifferent honest and excellent well; a contemporary noted the same pattern in excessive good, mighty great, and prodigious cold. The habit was clearly everywhere, criticism notwithstanding.
Instead of: He had nearly died. → He had near died. Instead of: I stayed, the weather being prodigiously cold. → ...the weather being prodigious cold. Instead of: By wrapping up warmly... → By wrapping up warm...
Other examples appear constantly in period writing without any sense that they need defending:
A bell sounds clear. The sun shines bright. He rides single.
Flat adverb — An adverb with the same form as its related adjective, lacking the -ly ending (drive slow, sleep tight). Common and unremarkable in eighteenth-century speech; still survives today in casual English even though formal grammar prefers the -ly form.
By the third quarter of the century, some intensifying adverbs had become genuinely fashionable and genteel — very and quite chief among them — while older intensifiers such as full, right, mighty, plaguy, and grievous were still in wide use but had started to sound a bit old-fashioned or countrified, especially to gentry ears.
Some of the brass work is mighty neat. 'Twas a mighty hot day. He's plaguy fond of work.
Reach for mighty, plaguy, or right to flavor the speech of an older, rural, or lower-status character. Save very and quite for a character who wants to sound current and genteel.
5.3 Making Comparisons
Comparative and superlative forms were considerably less standardized in the 1770s than the strict two-versus-three-or-more rule taught in modern classrooms. Speakers of the period didn't hesitate to use a superlative (-est) form when comparing only two things — a usage that would be marked as an error today:
the weakest of the two
Both major methods of forming comparatives and superlatives — adding -er/-est, or using more/most — coexisted for many words, without either one being considered more "correct":
long, longer, longest — and — long, more long, most long wise, wiser, wisest — and — wise, less wise, least wise
Multisyllable adjectives usually took more/most in careful or genteel speech, but attaching -er/-est directly to a longer word was a well-recognized marker of an uneducated speaker — useful, again, as a deliberate class signal:
It was the becomingest cap I had in the world. This is the surprisingest part of all. He's the ill-bredest person ever I see.
Irregular comparisons (good, better, best; bad, worse, worst) worked exactly as they do today. But a construction that modern English forbids outright — the double comparative or superlative, stacking more or most on top of an already-comparative or superlative form — was still around in the 1770s, though by then it read as antique and distinctly ungenteel, best suited to an elderly or uneducated character:
They are far more happier than we. The most cruellest thing in the world has happened. I would have you learn to be more politer, Sir.
Double comparatives had already fallen out of genteel favor by the third quarter of the century. They work well for an elderly or plainly uneducated character, but a young gentry character using one would read as a mistake rather than a period flourish.
5.4 Putting It Together
Take a plain description — "He is a very wise and very good man" — and rebuild it two ways: once for a gentry character praising a respected friend, and once for a plain-spoken older character doing the same. You might land somewhere near:
Gentry: He is a man wise and good, and I am mighty obliged to him. Plain-spoken elder: He's the wisest, goodest man ever I see — the most honestest fellow in the county.
Notice how the same underlying compliment shifts register entirely based on which tools from this chapter you reach for.