English Idioms: The Bigger They Are, The Harder They Fall

One of our English students recently wrote us an email asking us this:

“The sooner, the better.” I would have rather say “the soonest, the best.” Why use a comparative? Are there any other expressions where we use THE + the “ER” form or THE MORE (instead of the MOST) ?

What our student is referring to is sometimes called a “double comparative.” Some of the most famous are “The more, the merrier,” and “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

We use the + comparative/the + comparative to show one thing depends on something else: In the case of “The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” how hard the person falls depends on how big they are. The idea here is that if someone has a lot of money, fame, power, strength, etc. it will more difficult for them to lose those things (fall).

“The more, the merrier,” the more people, the merrier (more fun) the party, concert, etc. will be.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” This one is intentionally contradictory/ironic. The idea is that people, governments, politicians, etc. always say they are changing to make things better, but really things never change.

Those are some of the most common uses of double comparatives, but you can use them anytime. For example, you can say:

The more I study English, the easier it gets.

The harder you study, the faster you’ll learn.

You can even make your own contradictory/ironic sentences:

The more I study, the less I know.

The harder I work, the poorer I get.

Can you hear the double comparative in the Red Hot Chili Peppers song below? What do you think it means?