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Can I say for instance “it's totally more important,” or is that wrong and that word totally doesn't work there? Do we only have a certain range of words which we can use when creating comparatives and superlatives?

Paul Tanenbaum
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train bee 282
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    That could be said, if totally were being used in its colloquial sense of “absolutely, without a doubt.” But it sounds a bit peculiar. But to get a reliable answer, you’ll have to edit your question to specify more about your context and your meaning. – Paul Tanenbaum Nov 22 '23 at 13:50
  • Is there any set of words which can be use to modify comparatives and supervatives some general set or it all depends on context? Can we for istance use words like pretty rather and so to say pretyy more expenisve and rather more expensive and so on? – train bee 282 Nov 22 '23 at 14:19
  • *Rather more expensive* works (it sounds to this American like a Britishism). As does *somewhat more expensive. Pretty more expensive* does not. I know of no rule; sorry. – Paul Tanenbaum Nov 22 '23 at 14:24

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In a formal (or even semi-formal) context, this doesn't make much sense. There's no particular grammar rule, just I can't work out what "totally" could mean here. It doesn't describe how much more important something is. It is possible to say "slightly more" or "very much more" for example, but not "totally".

However in very casual speech, or perhaps slang, "totally" can be used to mean "certainly". "Dude, you totally boned that dude in the head" (Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure). I doubt this is the sense you are trying to achieve.

James K
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Taken literally, the word "totally" means "completely". Like, "The army was totally destroyed in the battle." It was completely destroyed. That doesn't really make sense in this context. It was "completely more important"?

"Totally" is also an informal word meaning "absolutely", or in general "very much". As in, "Oh, Sally Jones is a totally great singer!" So if you were speaking informally, it would be plausible to say "totally more important" to mean "very much more important" or "certainly more important". But frankly, that sounds VERY informal to me, bordering on slang. Like saying, "Wow, this is totally to the max a rad party!"

I don't know if there's any general rule about what adjectives can be used with a comparative. Any more than one could answer, "What adjectives can be used to describe an animal?" All one could say is, words that make sense in context.

Jay
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