Irregular comparatives — meilleur and mieux

In one line

bon and bien never take plus — they have their own comparative forms, and the first is an adjective while the second is an adverb.

English has exactly the same four irregulars in exactly the same slots: good → better, well → better, bad → worse, little → less. meilleur is "better" the adjective, mieux is "better" the adverb — and the only genuine difficulty is that English uses one word for both.

The forms on this page

The table

plus bon and plus bien are both wrong. But moins bon is correct — the irregularity affects only the "more" side. English behaves identically: "less good" is fine, "more good" is not.

meilleur or mieux? — the only question that matters

meilleur is an adjective, so it describes a noun. mieux is an adverb, so it describes a verb.

The English test that solves it: English has one word, better, but two words underneath it — good and well. Ask which one the positive form would be.

So: "a better book" → un meilleur livre. "He works better" → il travaille mieux. The same test settles pire versus pis and, in English, tells you whether "better" is really "more good" or "more well".

And meilleur agrees like any adjective

mieux is an adverb, so it never changes.

pire — and the fact that plus mauvais is also correct

Both are accepted. pire is more formal and more common.

moindre — almost always figurative

And in one very common phrase:

sans le moindre doute — without the slightest doubt le moindre effort — the least effort

English splits this the same way — "smaller" for size, "lesser" for importance — and "the slightest" is the exact match for le moindre.

Phrases built on these

Il vaut mieux + infinitive is one of the most useful spoken structures there is: Il vaut mieux partir maintenant. — we'd better go now. It is English "had better", and like it, it takes a bare infinitive.

Examples

Common mistakes

Why these four resisted