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I was talking a few minutes ago and found myself completely stumped as to how to phrase a statement without taking thirty minutes to say what I was trying to say or breaking a grammatical rule and saying "more better."

"Hey these peanut butter cup oreos look good."

Now what I wanted to say was that I had heard about them, and supposedly they were better than the regular peanut butter oreos, but they were even better than you would expect them to be if someone just told you they were better. So, they're not just better than the peanut butter ones, they're more better than the peanut butter ones than you'd expect.

Like if I were to define a new word, plok. Plok means "better than peanut butter oreos". These peanut butter cup oreos are more plok than you'd expect.

I don't know if that makes any sense. I hope so. So my question is, is this acceptable in English grammar? They say you're never supposed to say "more better" but that's if they're to be used to modify the same word or phrase, which they aren't in this case.

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    So, these surpass expectation? I've also heard people say, "These are beyond good" or "beyond better" in informal conversation.
    – Jim
    Apr 3, 2016 at 17:45
  • "More better" is never acceptable, but that doesn't stop many fairly intelligent people from using the term from time to time.
    – Hot Licks
    Apr 3, 2016 at 17:45
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    More better is perfectly grammatical as explained in this dupe. It's not idiomatic (consider 'even better') and it's not sound logic. Better is a true false state. You're saying your true state is even truer. Bleh. :P
    – candied_orange
    Apr 3, 2016 at 17:49
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    If you want a deliberately facetious usage, I personally prefer That's much more betterer!
    – FumbleFingers
    Apr 3, 2016 at 18:36
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    "Even better," As CandiedOrange says, works fine; so does "better yet."
    – Steven Littman
    Apr 3, 2016 at 21:22

3 Answers 3

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To express a sentiment like "I was expecting these to be better than the others, but they're <more better> than i was expecting", you would say that they are even better.

You actually say that they were "even better" in your question, so it sounds like you already know the answer to your own question?

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  • My problem was that without rearranging the syntax, it still sounds awkward. "These are even better than the others than you would expect." But rewording it like you have, it works perfectly.
    – Devsman
    Apr 4, 2016 at 12:52
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Better is a comparative form. Saying that X is better than Y simply says that X has more of some quality than Y. Trying to push this further with *"more better" doesn't work because it just says the same thing - that X has more of that quality than Y. (If used colloquially, you may be able to convey the intent this way at the cost of sounding ungrammatical.)

To say that X is separated from Y to a greater degree, you can say X is much better than Y.

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"more better" is incorrect. You can say: a lot better / far better / a lot better by far / much better / way better

Or: There's no comparison between peanut butter oreos and these peanut butter cup

oreos.

Or: Peanut butter oreos do not compare with these peanut butter cup oreos.

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