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I've just come across these inflective forms of the adjective motley, instead of the expected motleyer/motleyest.

Is this a pronunciation spelling, or a regular pattern like those for clayey and skyey? Unfortunately, I cannot retrieve a list of adjectives ending in -ey that is not a an alternative form of -y/-ie.

After all, we write honeyed, moneyed, hackneyed, etc.

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    Under "Forms", the (subscription-only) full Oxford English Dictionary has 1800s– motlier (comparative), motliest (superlative) They also have smiliest elsewhere. I see nothing unusual about those forms. Or holey, holier, holiest
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Oct 19 at 9:58
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    It might sometimes be whimsical in the written form, but in spoken contexts, the holiest socks should normally be easily understood a referring to the socks with the most holes, rather than the most holy socks.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Oct 19 at 10:06
  • @FumbleFingers In clayey , skyey , or sprayey, t's clear that we have "-ey", unlike in motley. But what would be the adverbial -ly forms from them?
    – GJC
    Commented Oct 19 at 10:48
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    I've never seen motley used in the comparative or superlative, but motleyer wouldn't be 'expected' by me. Adjectives ending in -y normally have comparatives with an 'i' - happier, cheerier, bouncier etc.
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Oct 19 at 10:50
  • I've never encountered comparative / superlative forms of clayey, and the full OED doesn't list them. I can't get to the actual text, but a Google snippet shows this from Chambers: clayiest Derivatives follow similar rules as those for inflections , ie a y following a consonant changes to an i before a following suffix (except -ing), whereas one following a vowel does not. As for comparatives / superlatives of skyey, sprayey, I'm not inclined to accept those as credible words, however you spell them.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Oct 19 at 10:56

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Gooier and gluier are the comparative forms of gooey and gluey.

In all the other examples I can find (like dopier) there are alternative spellings of the original adjective (e.g. dopey or dopy), so it's not clear whether these should be counted as genuine examples.

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  • Yet, we still write honeyed, moneyed, hackneyed etc...
    – GJC
    Commented Oct 20 at 16:22
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There just aren't that many adjectives that end in unstressed -ey and are commonly used in the comparative or superlative, at least in formal writing.

OneLook Dictionary Search turns up 49 adjectives ending in -ey; with false positives removed, I would give the resulting list as follows:

boney, cagey, choosey, clayey, cockney, curvey, dicey, dickey, dopey, flakey, flukey, gamey, gluey, gooey, goosey, grapey, hokey, holey, homey, mangey, matey, motley, mousey, multistorey, nosey, phoney, plaguey, pokey, pricey, ropey, scaley, scarey, slatey, spacey, stagey, tiddley, whiney, winey.

Taking a look at some of the more promising of these, there are sometimes hits on Google Books for forms such as "diceyer" (in quotation marks) or "priceyest", but I haven't seen any data that would make me conclude that there is an established rule worth worrying about.

I wouldn't really call -ier or -iest in this context a "pronunciation spelling", though, just a variant, as often exists even in the case of the positive endings -ey and -y.

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  • Many of those ending in -ey would normally be spelled with simply -y. Bony, choosy, curvy, ... and the corresponding er/est would be normally spelled -ier, -iest. So there are even fewer than expected.
    – Mitch
    Commented Oct 21 at 11:43

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