Definition of Comparative

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Comparative

Of or pertaining to comparison.

Proceeding from, or by the method of, comparison; as, the comparative sciences; the comparative anatomy.

Estimated by comparison; relative; not positive or absolute, as compared with another thing or state.

Expressing a degree greater or less than the positive degree of the quality denoted by an adjective or adverb. The comparative degree is formed from the positive by the use of -er, more, or less; as, brighter, more bright, or less bright.

The comparative degree of adjectives and adverbs; also, the form by which the comparative degree is expressed; as, stronger, wiser, weaker, more stormy, less windy, are all comparatives.

An equal; a rival; a compeer.

One who makes comparisons; one who affects wit.

Related Definitions:

Absolute, Adjective, Adverb, All, Also, An, Anatomy, And, Another, Are, As, Bright, By, Comparative, Compared, Comparison, Compeer, Degree, Denoted, Equal, Estimated, Expressed, Expressing, Form, Formed, From, Is, Less, Method, More, Not, Of, One, Or, Pertaining, Positive, Proceeding, Quality, Relative, Rival, State, Stormy, Than, The, Thing, To, Use, Which, Who, Windy, Wit, With

Comparative Quotations

There's no such thing, you know, as picking out the best woman: it's only a question of comparative badness, brother.
Plautus

In comparing therefore the value of the same commodity, at different periods of time, the consideration of the comparative skill and intensity of labour, required for that particular commodity, needs scarcely to be attended to, as it operates equally at both periods.
David Ricardo

All human excellence is but comparative. There may be persons who excel us, as much as we fancy we excel the meanest.
Samuel Richardson

I then endeavoured to show that it is more especially in the thorough conformity with law which natural phenomena and natural products exhibit, and in the comparative ease with which laws can be stated, that this difference exists.
Hermann von Helmholtz

There is a great interest in comparative religion and a desire to understand faiths other than our own and even to experiment with exotic cults.
Emily Greene Balch

One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature at any rate, of prose fiction, and the comparative absence, in the two great classical languages, of what we call by that name.
George Saintsbury

I think our failure in the production of good town churches of distinctive character must have struck you often, as it has me, when contrasted with our comparative success in country churches.
George Edmund Street

At Harvard I was in charge of the comparative anatomy labs.
Robert T. Bakker

Comparative Translations

comparative in German is vergleichend

Quotes