single word requests - A technical term to describe adjectives like "fast", "long", "strong", "large", "deep", "loud", etc


What is the technical term to describe adjectives like fast, long, strong that are used to describe a particular property of an object in relation to another object's?


Here is an example.


Let's say I have a 20-centimetre ruler.




  1. I can say,



    This ruler is short.



    as I compare it to a 1-meter ruler.




  2. Or I can give the opposite statement as I compare it to my pen:



    This ruler is long.





Both statements make sense. Whether it is short or long depends on what I am comparing it to.


(Edit: counterexamples would be Christian, gravitational, electromagnetic, cosmic, cosmological. These are adjectives, too. And I don't think they fit into the category.)


So what is this type of adjectives technically called?


I've come up with the phrase 'relative term', but after a check with Wikipedia, it doesn't seem to be the technical term I am looking for.



A relative term is a term that makes two or more distinct references to objects (which may be the same object, for example in "The Morning Star is the Evening Star"). A relative term is typically expressed in ordinary language by means of a phrase with explicit or implicit blanks. Examples:
__ loves __
__ is the same object as __
__ is giver of __ to __.


The word is is a relative term when it expresses identity. The colloquial meaning for a relative term is that > it is different for different people. An example: someone who is 5 feet tall might think someone who is 6 feet tall is tall, but someone who is 5 feet 5 inches would think that someone who is 6 feet 5 inches is tall.




Answer



The Adjectives article in wikipedia mentions four kinds of use of adjectives; see the article for details, but (in brief) it refers to Attributive adjectives, Predicative adjectives, Absolute adjectives, and Nominal adjectives. In your example "This ruler is long", long is being used as a nominal adjective, in spite of being a relative term. Note, your question presupposes the adjectives in the examples are relative terms; that there is another object being compared to; but often the comparison is to a fixed set of things, and within that framework the comparison is absolute rather than relative.


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