Talk:medior

RFV discussion: April 2020–April 2022

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Latin "medior" as comparative form of adjective "medius"

The page for medius says "comparative medior" (there is no separate entry for medior as an adjective form, and no citations are given for this form). This is contradicted by the Wikipedia article Latin declension which says "Comparatives and superlatives of -eus/-ius adjectives: First and second declension adjectives that end in -eus or -ius are unusual in that they do not form the comparative and superlative by taking endings at all. Instead, magis ('more') and maximē ('most'), the comparative and superlative degrees of magnoperē ('much, greatly'), respectively, are used." Which is correct?--Urszag (talk) 05:34, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

This online tool for Latin conjugations and declensions agrees with Wikipedia. Semantically, the comparative is rare (what is the comparative of the adjective half?), but I see magis medius used by Aquinas in his commentary on Aristotle’s Politics. That does not mean much, though, as the Doctor Angelicus liked to form comparatives with magis.  --Lambiam 20:47, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

(Notifying Fay Freak, Brutal Russian, JohnC5, Benwing2, Lambiam, Mnemosientje, Nicodene): What do? — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 04:42, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Medius does not have to mean 'half': it can also mean 'middling' and so on, in which case a comparative form makes sense.

From a cursory look through Google Books, there appear to be numerous attestations of medior and e.g. mediorem, seemingly all medieval or modern. It may still be the case that the rule stated above is prescriptively valid for those periods- it is certainly descriptively valid for Classical times. Nicodene (talk) 21:07, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, can you link to specific examples so they can be added to the entry?--Urszag (talk) 04:27, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

@Urszag: Done, though not in the most elegant way. Nicodene (talk) 03:03, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

RFV-passed This, that and the other (talk) 03:04, 24 April 2022 (UTC)