Can commoner be used as an adjective? I thought it was a noun. Can we say something is commoner?

Question

I thought "commoner" is 'a person not of royal birth', but saw "commoner" used instead of "more common". Is this correct?

Answer 1

It can be used that way and understood, because of the general pattern of adding -er to adjectives to form comparatives. However, commoner as a comparative is not standard.

The Oxford English Dictionary's entry for commoner only lists it as a noun. Wiktionary's entry does include an adjectival form, and it is defined as "more common," but calls this usage "less desirable" and "much less commonly used" than "more common."

Answer 2

It seems that it is allowed:

As a general rule, most other two syllable adjectives also form comparatives and superlatives with more and most, apart from those ending in -y (see (iii) above). However a few two-syllable adjectives can take either -er/-est or more/most. Here are five of the most common examples:

 common          commoner/more common    the commonest/most common      
 narrow      narrower/more narrow        the narrowest/most narrow

Checking up Google Ngrams, using "commonest" and "most common" (not using "commoner" as Google Ngrams will show results of "commoner" as a noun) :

"Most common"(and deductively "more common") is more used.

Answer 3

Commoner is a noun.

We can say "a red ball".

But we can't say "a commoner ball".

But of course, you can say someone/something is a commoner, just like how you can say someone/something is a plebeian.