bigger

Formsbiggers, biggering, biggered

1. 1
   adjective

   Comparative of big.

   The new stadium is bigger than the one it replaced.

   Their second house was noticeably bigger and brighter.

   Note

   The regular comparative of a short adjective: big takes -er, and its final g doubles before the suffix. It carries every meaning of big with it, informal ones included, so bigger can mean fatter or more muscular as well as larger. It also anchors the paired construction, as in Joseph C. Lincoln's Mr. Pratt's Patients (1913): "the queerer the cure… the bigger the attraction."

2. 2
   verbnonstandardtransitive or intransitive

   To make something larger, or to become larger.

   The merchants sought to bigger their fortunes through new trade routes.

   She's in along with mother, talking about the college; it's to be biggered, sir.

   1871, Julian Leep, A Ready-Made Family

   Similarenlarge, grow, increase, expand

   Oppositeshrink, diminish, reduce

   Note

   A rare, nonstandard verb that turns the comparative adjective itself into an action. Its best-known run is in Dr Seuss's The Lorax (1971): "I biggered my factory. I biggered my roads." It inflects regularly (biggered, biggering) and works both with an object and without one. It suits playful or deliberately childlike writing, like the rhyming verse of a 2002 Network World column by Mark Gibbs, rather than neutral prose.

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