What adjective is correct lovelier or more lovely?

Answer 1

This is how the rules go:

1) if your adjective has just one syllable, it is a short adjective. Add -er to all short adjectives to form their comparative of superiority and -est to form their superlative. If "e" is the last letter of your one-syllable short adjective, just add "r"/st". That rule makes any adjective with more than one syllable a long adjective unless stated otherwise. And it is in every responsible grammar book: there are exceptions.

2) 2-syllable adjectives ending in -y, -er, -ow and -le are analyzed, considered, felt as short adjectives and consequently follow rule 1. One might think this is generic. However examples like "narrow" and "hollow" show clearly that there is some resistance going on for x numbers of factors. It seems that where "narrower" may sound natural, native speakers would not use "hollower" that often. One of these factors could be "euphony", what sounds right to the ear (without that combination being tautologic). As a matter of fact rules definitely say that "narrow" and "more narrow" are correct. However, and this is a telling sign, the same dictionaries that offer "narrower/narrowest" do not even put forward "hollower/hollowest". In these dictionaries the absence of the latter forms unmistakably means they either do not exist, are not correct or… their use is so rare that they are not even worth being taken into consideration.

3) Surprise, surprise. A few adjectives are nonplussing (if this one does existJ). "lovely" is one of them; if not equally used, both forms (lovelier/loveliest vs. more lovely/most lovely) seem to have quite a high number of followers. But, wait… doesn't "lovely" have 3 syllables? So why would it even appear in this debate. The only possible exceptions are the one given above. No,obviously! There is no mention of that situation at all in the numerous English grammar books I have tracked. That should be disturbing. I'm sure there necessarily are books dealing with this specific point, unfortunately I have never chanced upon them. In my case that would have been serendipitously relieving.

4) Most English grammar books will give "lovelier/loveliest" as the correct comparative and superlative for "lovely". However they do not offer any reliable explanation to what is seemingly an exception.

What follows is a weak attempt at a beginning of an explanation (nature abhors a vacuum): lovely is a 3-syllable word and as such "more lovely and most lovely" should be the correct forms... this is correct when... written but when said "lovely» becomes a 2-syllable word and follows the 'y-ending 2-syllable adjective" rule applied to "happy, easy etc." possibly by contamination. The same could be said of "lively". Now, how could one account for the solid competition offered by "more lovely". The reasons new forms are created are far from being evident. One possible reason is the foreign input. If you put rules in a foreigner's hand, he/she will use them indiscriminately. The foreigner does not have the intuition of the native speaker so he/she will, at least at first, view, hence feel, "lovely" as a 3-syllable word and strictly and sternly apply the long adjective rule. Historically though, where might that embryo of an explanation be more valid, in the UK or in the US? That does make matters extremely complicated.

Answer 2

lovelier lovelier

Answer 3

No