Greater

How to spell greater

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce greater

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does greater mean?

1. adjectiveLarger in size, amount, intensity, or importance than something else.

Greater in a sentence

• The second offer carried a greater risk than the first.

• This year the harvest was far greater than last year.

Where does greater come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the comparative form of 'great', which descends from the Old English 'great', a word that originally meant 'thick', 'coarse', or 'massive' rather than 'excellent'. The same Germanic root produced the Dutch 'groot' and the German 'gross', both still meaning 'large', which shows how the family clustered around the idea of physical bigness. Over the medieval centuries the English sense drifted from sheer size toward importance, eminence, and quality, so that 'great' could praise a person as much as measure a thing. The comparative is built in the ordinary Germanic way by adding '-er', giving 'greater', and that '-er' ending is the only spelling point to watch since the silent shift from 'great' keeps the same vowel team 'ea'. The word entered English long before the Norman Conquest, making it one of the oldest layers of the language.

How the word is built

• great (from Old English great: big, thick, coarse)
• -er (comparative suffix)