Is the comparative and superlative forms of little: Littler and Littlest or more little and most little?
Either way sounds incorrect to me and I believe in modern speech they are never used. Anytime someone says, “He’s littler than me,” people giggle like its a pun. Instead to compare little or make a superlative we simply say smaller and smallest, no?
Yes, those forms are all correct. Like most adjectives, little forms the comparative degree with either the suffix -er or the adverb more, and forms the superlative degree with either the suffix -est or the adverb most.
What is your belief based on? If you google littler than or littlest, you will get thousands of hits using both forms – including more than a few references to the popular children’s book The Littlest Angel by Charles Tazewell. Little is probably less commonly used in speech than its synonym small, but it is far from “never used” in “modern speech.”
One reason may be that, in this example, me belongs in the subjective case: <He’s littler than I [am]>.
No, small is a different word with its own comparative and superlative forms. It is a synonym of little, not a different form of little.
Well, [url=http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=littlest]www.dictionary.com’s defintion for little has:
Hope this helps.
I cannot imagine saying “more little” or “most little”. That said, I usually avoid “littler” and “littlest” since they are not euphonious and would mostly substitute “smaller” and “smallest”.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll wanna settle down
Until tomorrow I’ll just keep moving on