healthier or more healthy? (2025)

Dear friends,

Can you help me please?

How can I say correctly:

'Fresh fruit and vegetables are MORE HEALTHY or HEALTHIER than fast food.'

I'm confused how to form comparatives from 'healthy', 'happy', etc.

Thank you in advance.

morzh said:

Both are good; however from natives I hear ""healthier" more often and somehow from non-natives - "more healthy"
Don't ask me why it is.

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True..."more healthy" is probably used more often (with the use of "even") to add emphasis:

Yogurt is healthy, Greek yogurt is healthier, and fat-free Greek yogurt is even more healthy.

Miss Julie said:

Yogurt is healthy, Greek yogurt is healthier, and fat-free Greek yogurt is even more healthy.

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(and this is all we have enough money for in Greece today )

morzh said:

Both are good; however from natives I hear ""healthier" more often and somehow from non-natives - "more healthy"

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That's right: native speakers are much more likely to say 'healthier'.

(See 'Healthy Eating' by Herb Omlet and Letty Sleeves.)

sunnymood said:

Dear friends,

'Fresh fruit and vegetables are MORE HEALTHY or HEALTHIER than fast food.'

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In this case, for some reason I can't quite pin down, I prefer "healthier". But that doesn't mean that I wouldn't use "more healthy" in another sentence, perhaps to make it flow better in a written text.

Not so correct...

healthier, happier, friendlier are correct.

Here's the rule :

• When adjectives count 2 syllables AND ends with -ow, -le, -er, or -y, they are considered as short adjectives, therefore you add -er at the end to form the comparative (or 'the ...-est' to form the superlative).
  Same for 1 syllable adjectives (obviously short!).

• When an adjective counts 2 syllables AND DOESN'T end with -ow, -le, -er, or -y, it is considered as a long adjective, therefore you add 'more' before it to form the comparative (or 'the... -est' to form the superlative).
  Same goes for adjectives counting 3 syllables or more.

Hope this helps !

I’m not sure that those rules hold water, do they?

They seem to imply that senile would be come seniler, dapper would become dapperer, and happy would become happyer.

lingobingo said:

I’m not sure that those rules hold water, do they?...

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Of course not. "Rules" in English never hold water. Only guidelines hold water, for a certain value of probability.

We mostly said "more healthy than" up to about 150 years ago, and then we started preferring "healthier than". Now we only use the longer form about 5% of the time, but it's still accepted as correct.

lingobingo said:

I’m not sure that those rules hold water, do they?

They seem to imply that senile would be come seniler, dapper would become dapperer, and happy would become happyer.

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Happy becomes happier.

Yes, I’m sure we all know that. But my comment was meant as a joke (not that I remember posting it ). In fact, if you did actually apply that rule as stated, you’d get senileer.

The “rules” quoted in #12 seem to come from a spurious source (What is the comparative adjective of healthy? – FastAdvices).