The second degree of monosyllabic adjectives in English is usually formed by adding -er to the end, sometimes with the last consonant doubled, e.g. taller or bigger. Some adjectives are completely irregular, such as better, not gooder.
Multi-syllabic adjectives usually form a second degree using the word “more”, e.g. more expensive, more important. This often leads students to combine the two forms and say “more better”, “more taller” or “more richer”. This is a mistake! If something is “better”, it is always just “better”, never “more better”:
- My car is better than yours. (right)
- My car is more better than yours. (wrong)
If “A and B are better than C” and “A is better than B”, it would indeed make sense to say that “A is more better than C than B”, in the sense of “A is better than C more than B is better than C”, but, as in English, such a sentence sounds skeletal and is not encountered in practice. Instead, we use the phrase “even better”:
- B is better than C, and A is even better than B.
However, this does not mean that “more” and “better” can never occur consecutively in the same sentence, which some English teachers automatically label as a mistake without thinking about the context. It is possible to say, for example:
- We need more better people.
In the sense of “we need more better people”, which is a meaningful sentence.