§120. Declension of Comparatives
Comparatives are declined as follows:—
| melior, better STEM meliōr- for meliōs- | plūs, more STEM plūr- for plūs- | |||
| SINGULAR | ||||
| M., F. | N. | M., F. | N. | |
| NOM. | melior | melius | ----- | plūs |
| GEN. | meliōris | meliōris | ----- | plūris |
| DAT. | meliōrī | meliōrī | ----- | ----- |
| ACC. | meliōrem | melius | ----- | plūs |
| ABL. | meliōre (-ī) | meliōre (-ī) | ----- | plūre |
| PLURAL | ||||
| NOM. | meliōrēs | meliōra | plūrēs | plūra |
| GEN. | meliōrum | meliōrum | plūrium | plūrium |
| DAT. | meliōribus | meliōribus | plūribus | plūribus |
| ACC. | meliōrēs (-īs) | meliōra | plūrēs (-īs) | plūra |
| ABL. | meliōribus | meliōribus | plūribus | plūribus |
a. All comparatives except plūs are declined like melior.
b. The stem of comparatives properly ended in ŏ¯s-; but this became or in the nominative masculine and feminine, and ōr- in all other cases except the nominative and accusative singular neuter, where s is retained and ŏ is changed to ŭ (cf. honŏr, -ōris; corpus, -ŏris). Thus comparatives appear to have two terminations.
c. The neuter singular plūs is used only as a noun. The genitive (rarely the ablative) is used only as an expression of value (cf. § 417). The dative is not found in classic use. The compound complūrēs, several, has sometimes neuter plural complūria.
J. H. Allen and J. B. Greenough, New Latin Grammar (Boston: Ginn, 1903). Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.