Irregular Comparatives: bon → meilleur, bien → mieux
Irregular Comparatives: bon → meilleur, bien → mieux
A small handful of very common words refuse to take plus at all — the same irregular pattern English shows with good/better and well/better, and worth learning as fixed exceptions rather than derived forms.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
bon (adjective) → meilleur
Ce gâteau est meilleur. (This cake is better.) — never plus bon
This cake is better.
bon ('good') has its own irregular comparative, meilleur, which agrees in gender and number like any adjective: meilleur, meilleure, meilleurs, meilleures. Saying plus bon is a mistake native speakers will immediately notice — this is a true irregular, parallel to English good → better rather than good → *more good.
bien (adverb) → mieux
Elle chante mieux que moi. (She sings better than me.)
She sings better than me.
bien ('well', describing how an action is done) becomes mieux, not plus bien — again mirroring English well → better. Because it's an adverb, mieux never changes form regardless of gender or number — unlike meilleur, which agrees. Keep the pair straight: meilleur describes a noun (a better cake), mieux describes a verb (sings better), just as English keeps 'better' (the cake) and 'better' (sings) looking identical but grammatically distinct as adjective vs. adverb.
mauvais (adjective) → pire or plus mauvais
C'est pire. / C'est plus mauvais. (It's worse.) — both acceptable
It's worse.
Unlike bon, mauvais ('bad') tolerates both an irregular form (pire, more common for abstract or serious situations) and the regular plus mauvais (more common for concrete things, like food or weather) — a bit like how English also keeps two options for 'bad': 'worse' (irregular) is standard, but you'll occasionally see 'more bad' in casual or emphatic speech. Either French form is correct — pire tends to sound slightly more formal or dramatic.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
| French | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| meilleur | may-YUHR | better (masc. singular) |
| meilleure | may-YUHR | better (fem. singular) |
| meilleurs / meilleures | may-YUHR | better (plural) |
| mieux | mee-UH | better (adverb, invariable) |
| le/la meilleur(e) | luh/lah may-YUHR | the best (adjective) |
| le mieux | luh mee-UH | the best (adverb) |
| pire | peer | worse (irregular) |
| plus mauvais(e) | plew moh-VEH(z) | worse (regular alternative) |