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at first the following sentence sounded unnatural to me, but after looking up the uses of "older" and "elder" online it seems that either can be used in the following sentence:

"people that are elder than you"

Is this correct, and if so why does it sound so unnatural to use "elder"?!

Thank you

FumbleFingers
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Jo R
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    Does this answer your question? The difference between "Older" and "Elder". Also Can I refer to someone as "elder member" in internet forums? – FumbleFingers Jul 03 '23 at 16:10
  • Yea thank you! I had not seen the rule with “than” anywhere else, that’s exactly what I needed. Thank you – Jo R Jul 04 '23 at 13:26
  • I don't know why someone downvoted your question. I've just upvoted it myself, to offset any loss of reputation points for you. But even though your question is now closed, I'll edit the title specifically to include "than" - so maybe in future if someone comes along wanting to ask about the exact same thing, they might find this first, then follow the "duplicate" links to resolve their problem without needing to post another question. – FumbleFingers Jul 04 '23 at 13:40
  • @FumbleFingers I don't see how including 'than' in the title makes any difference. It's still the same question as the mentioned duplicate. The 'than' part doesn't really apply to the question; you could put it in any kind of sentence. – paddotk Aug 11 '23 at 12:41
  • @paddotk: It potentially makes a huge difference! In contexts like a reference to my eldest / oldest* child, most native Anglophones wouldn't really care which word you used, but in the specific context being queried here (before than), nobody ever uses elder. There are other differences (we almost exclusively reserve elder* for contexts referencing human beings, for example), but imho including the word *than* in the indexes used for searching past questions will sometimes be useful. – FumbleFingers Aug 11 '23 at 15:50
  • @FumbleFingers It doesn't take away the fact that this is a duplicate the linked related question, even if this is about one specific use of the words. The top answer there even specifies "You cannot use elder with 'than'". – paddotk Aug 15 '23 at 09:52
  • @paddotk: I never said it wasn't a duplicate - in fact, I was the first user to closevote citing that earlier question as a duplicate. I don't know if this OP might have even have seen that earlier question, but somehow missed the point about *elder + than* (we must make allowances for that fact that it's all in a foreign language from the OP's perspective). But my comment + edit was for the benefit of *future* querents who might be better served by finding this question *first* (because it includes the word "than") - and then being redirected to the "original" question. – FumbleFingers Aug 15 '23 at 10:21
  • @FumbleFingers Okay, then hopefully you can understand my confusion as I was responding to your second (Juli 4) comment. Seems a bit contradictory. – paddotk Aug 16 '23 at 08:19
  • @paddotk: My second Jul4 comment (a few minutes after the auto-generated closevote message, which I assume you're counting as the first) was to explain why I upvoted and edited the question. It looks pretty clear to me. Especially given that the specific word-pair elder than never appears even once in the original, despite it being a relatively large page, with no less than 11 answers. Well, maybe it's there in a comment somewhere behind a "Show N more comments" hotspot - but my browser's page search doesn't find anything, so presumably other ways of searching also won't find it. – FumbleFingers Aug 16 '23 at 10:26

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