I'm wondering whether English has something beyond its superlative degree. In my language we call that "túlzófok", it literally translates to "exaggerative degree."
I'm wondering because I often hear and read phrases where the much more is used before the comparative, e.g.
much more stronger
but this is grammatically incorrect. Still, whenever I hear or read something like this, I can't help but think of our "túlzófók" and how people who use a phrase like this may have a similar intention, they may want to exaggerate. I don't know however if that's the case or if it's just something some people do as a habit and without any particular reason.
So, does English have an actual, non-arbitrary way of exaggerating adjectives in a way which is comparable to the superlative, or if it doesn't, has it ever had anything similar?
Best Answer
I found this pretty self-explanatory example of a "whimsical" usage that would be comprehensible to most native speakers even if they'd never come across it before...
...where even though everyone knows bestest isn't really a "valid" English word, it's perfectly acceptable in an informal context to use it to mean better than best.
I'll also just flag up these several hundred written instances of more betterer - though as pointed out here, that's more "dialectal" than "whimsically emphatic".
But neither of my examples (or any others, so far as I know) are valid in "standard, formal" English. To be strictly correct, Jazum would have needed to use a separate intensifier, such as very best friend.