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Anonymous Posted 20 years ago
Grammar

Usage of the word commoner

Hi

Can you please tell me whether the usage of the word 'commoner' is in existence? (In the following sentence.)

"However, Spitz naevi which have historically been known as ‘juvenile melanoma’ are 60 times commoner than melanoma in children."

Thanks for your help in this regard

Elango P.P.
  

Top answer

well, there are over 24,000 hits at Yahoo on "commoner than" (quotation marks are important for grouping the terms together) many from medicine thus it must be in recent use Now "more common than" gives over 1 million hits, thus you see which is in more frequent usage. Also, a recent dictionary says: Inflected Form(s): often -e r/-est thus commoner is often used as the comparative degree of the adjective. Also, you should try a search on commoner at this site, to find more current usage examples in other threads.

— Marius Hancu

  • well, there are over 24,000 hits at Yahoo on "commoner than" (quotation marks are important for grouping the terms together) many from medicine thus it must be in recent use Now "more common than" gives over 1 million hits, thus you see which is in more frequent usage.
  • Also, a recent dictionary says: Inflected Form(s): often -e r/-est thus commoner is often used as the comparative degree of the adjective.
  • Also, you should try a search on commoner at this site, to find more current usage examples in other threads.
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4 Answers
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well, there are over 24,000 hits at Yahoo on
"commoner than"
(quotation marks are important for grouping the terms together)
many from medicine
thus it must be in recent use

Now
"more common than" gives over 1 million hits, thus you see which is in more frequent usage.

Also, a recent dicti
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Marius Hancuwell, there are over 24,000 hits at Yahoo on
"commoner than"
(quotation marks are important for grouping the terms together)
many from medicine
thus it must be in recent use

Now
"more common than" gives over 1 million hits, thus you see which is in more frequent usage.
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I agree with pp. I'd use "most common" as it's the better comparative form (using the rule that "common" has two-syllables so keep the original word and precede with "more").

Basically, in the UK we use "commoner" as a noun.

Good luck,

Mella
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My vote is for more common and most common. Although it is certainly permissible to use commoner and commonest, there is likely to be no confusion over what is being discussed if you use the more/most option.

Siggy
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