Forum: ell.stackexchange.com
Tags: <adjectives><superlatives>
Title: Is "horrorest" a correct English word?
Question: I know that "horror" is also an adjective as in  I saw a horror movie yesterday.  But I don't know if its comparative and superlative forms are "horrorer" and "horrorest" respectively. I searched on Google and found that these forms are used  by people (mostly Indians) who are not quite good at English. I didn't find any standard source that uses these forms of the word. Please let me know if these forms are correct and accepted in standard English or not.

Answers:
sents: text: No, it is not a correct English word.
text: Apparently Merriam-Webster includes an adjective definition for 'horror', but I have to disagree with them here.
text: The example usage is 'horror movie', which you've also included in your question.
text: However, 'horror movie' is a compound noun , and in that phrase, 'horror' is acting as a noun adjunct , not an adjective.
text: A noun adjunct is a noun that is used in a manner similar to an adjective.
text: This does not automatically result in comparative and superlative forms, such as 'horrorest' and 'horrorer'.
text: Near the end of the linked 'compound noun' article, there's a discussion on alternative forms in natural language.
text: The example compares using a noun adjunct versus an adjective based on the noun (an inflection).
text: In this case those two forms would be: Noun-Adjunct
text: A horror movie
text: Inflection
text: A
text: horrifying movie
text: Inflection Comparative and Superlative A more horrifying movie
text: The most horrifying movie
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/10238/DCShannon
score: 26
sents: text: Horror is not an adjective.
text: It is a noun.
text: In the sentence "I saw a horror movie yesterday", it seems like an adjective, since it modifies "movie", but that's not what's actually happens. "
text: Horror movie" is a compound noun.
text: "Horror" can also be a noun by itself
text: Hey, could you recommend some good horror for me?
text: You could also substitute another movie genre for horror in the above sentence.
text: Action, adventure, comedy, drama etc.
text: and it works the same way.
text: Adjectives similar to horror are Scary, creepy, unnerving, unsettling, disturbing, frightening, horrific, terrifying...
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/15406/James
score: 20
sents: text: You've asked two questions in one.
text: First, horror cannot be used with the -er/-est comparative suffixes; native speakers would only ever use more and most .
text: This is simply because horror has more than one syllable .
text: There are a whole bunch of exceptions both ways (see the discussion in the comments and this more thorough explanation on Wikipedia ) but
text: the basic principle is that the comparative suffixes are primarily used with single-syllable words of Germanic derivation, while more and most are primarily used with many-syllable words of Latin derivation.
text: Second, more horror is not how a native speaker would compare the grade of horror in two works of fiction -- this movie didn't scare you much at all, that movie scared you a lot more.
text: Instead, we would say one was more horrifying than the other.
text: And one particular movie might be the most horrifying movie you have ever seen.
text: The logic behind this word choice is: you're describing something the movie did to you (it induced the emotion of horror) and you're comparing how effectively it did that .
text: The movie did something, so that requires a verb, specifically the -ify verb form of the induced state.
text: Then you convert the verb back into an adjective with -ing to make it an intrinsic quality of the movie, and now it can be compared to the same quality in other movies.
text: (We still can't use -er/-est , because horrifying has even more syllables ... except that *horrifyingest has so many stacked suffixes that I can imagine someone intentionally using it, for effect .)
text: More horror is also something native speakers might say, but it means something different and is used with different main verbs.
text: If I say movie A has or contains more horror than movie B, that means more of the time of movie A is spent on storytelling elements that are typical of the horror genre; this might or might not correlate with movie A being more horrifying
text: (perhaps A has so much horror in it that it goes over the top (sense 2) and becomes ridiculous).
text: (Boldface: emphasis.
text: Italics: mention, not use .
text: Leading asterisk:
text: marks descriptively-incorrect construct.)
text: ( More horrorshow means something completely different .)
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/2823/zwol
score: 6
sents: text: When you look it up in MW Learner's Dictionary it can be defined as an adjective: 2 horror /ˈhorɚ/adjective always used before a noun :intended to cause feelings of fear or horror but there are no comparative/superlative forms offered.
text: When you look up another adjective (let's say 'clear'), comparative and superlative forms are shown before the definition.
text: This may be used as a guide to determine whether an adjective is gradable or non-gradable .
text: Horror, I would say, is non-gradable, same as medical or dead .
text: P.S. ODO, CDO and LDOCE don't define of horror as an adjective, only as a noun.
text: I have found it defined as an adjective only at MW.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/18606/Lucky
score: 5
sents: text: Horror is a genre of fiction; it is not something you can apply to anything that is bad.
text: For that we have the words "horrible" and, much less commonly and a little more specific, "horrific".
text: Since each of those has three syllables, you would have to use them like this: horrible more horrible most horrible The best way to apply this to a horror movie would be to kind of get around it and say something like "the movie that is the most focused on being a horror film". ...
text: As mentioned in the comments, "horror", "horrible", "horrific", and "horrifying" all have different meanings, with "horrific" and "horrifying" being particularly close in definition.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/4427/Panzercrisis
score: 3

Summary of the answers:
No, this is not an English word. When you look horror up in  MW Learner's Dictionary  it can be defined as an adjective:   2 horror /ˈhorɚ/adjective  always used before a noun  :intended to cause feelings of fear or horror, but there are no comparative/superlative forms offered.
Horror cannot be rendered as a comparative adjective, thus 'horrorest' is not a word.