For making comparative forms of adjectives, we add “more” before adjectives with more than one syllable and other than those two-syllable adjectives ending in “y”. So for example:
“This watch is more expensive than yours.”
And for other adjectives we add “-er” to the end of the adjective. So:
“He is healthier than his wife.”
In both above examples, the comparatives help to convey that the subject is at the higher level about the mentioned adjective: “The price of this watch is higher than yours.”
How we can convey the meaning that the subject is at the lower level than another thing? For example:
“Regarding his health, he is worse than his wife’s condition.”
If I want to rearrange the above sentence, is the following sentence grammatically correct?
“He is less healthy than his wife.”
And if the above sentence is grammatically correct, should we use “less” for all kinds of adjectives? I mean one syllable or more than one syllable? For example is the following sentence grammatically correct?
“It is less cheap than that one.”
Best Answer
There are some comparatives that are almost always made with a suffix ("bigger"), some that are always made with "more" ("more intelligent"), and some that sound fine either way.
In the case of "less", there is no suffixed alternative. No matter how short the adjective, the opposite of "more X" is "less X". So "less red", "less wet", "less mad", "less tall", etc, and similarly "least red", "least wet", "least mad", "least tall".
Where a word has a well known opposite, we usually tend to use the ordinary comparative ("-er" or "more") rather than using "less". For example, it's relatively uncommon to say "less good" (we tend to say "worse") or "less bad" (we tend to say "better"), and it's uncommon to say "less tall" or "less short" (we tend to say "shorter" and "taller" respectively). But there's nothing grammatically incorrect about "less good" or "less big" or "less stupid" or "least easy". They are just less usual choices, and in some cases they might seem humorous.