is it correct grammar to say:

[crisgal]

that someone is "cleverer" than you?

[GEEMAC]

'More clever' I would've thought.

[Whickerman]

It is. However, it is also correct to say that someone is 'more clever' than you, and is probably easier to vocalise.

That said, the word 'smarter' is easier again...

[crisgal]

oh poo. i thought cleverer was wrong on my son's homework. It certainly sounds wrong though doesn't it?
seems his teacher is indeed much more cleverer than me!

[Whickerman]

more cleverer is definitely wrong lol!

[Whickerman]

some references btw:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/cleverer

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/clevere r

[jno]

it's correct. It sounds better than 'more clever' to me, but that's just me.

[crisgal]

I put "more cleverer" on purpose!
Thanks all. I shall try and use it today and enjoy correcting someone if they tell me it's incorrect. x

[Ethel]

More clever, but it isn't a clever thing to say.

:)

[Quizmonster]

There are very few basic English adjectives ending in -er. (Obviously, this does not include comparative adjectives such as bigger, slower, larger, tidier and so on of which there are multitudes.) The question as to what the comparative forms of these few should be is far from definite. That is, do we add another -er, as we do with most other basic adjectives or do we use �more'? Is A cleverer than B or more clever?
�Cleverer' sounds perfectly OK, but what about bitterer, eagerer, kosherer, limberer and soberer? None of these sounds completely right to my ears, though �soberer' might just about pass muster. The other four, however, definitely seem to require the use of �more'.

[Bert]

There's nothing wrong with 'cleverer', or the superlative form 'cleverest'. I agree with Quizmonster that the others he quotes do sound weird. Even 'soberer' sounds strange, though 'soberest' doesn't sound too bad. 'Bitterer' sounds wrong, but 'bitterest' is not so bad. As an aside, I would not think that 'kosher', like 'unique' and 'pregnant', can have a comparative or superlative. Things are either kosher or not.

[Quizmonster]

I did consider the possibly 'absolute' nature of 'kosher', Bert, but decided to use it anyway a) because I could think of so few -er adjectives and b) because the word has now taken on a wider meaning than the original concept of "in accordance with Jewish law".
One such colloquial meaning is 'correct' and there can certainly be 'degrees' of correctness in my view. But what the hey!

[corylus]

should be more clever than I

[Quizmonster]

Believe me, Crisgal - despite what Corylus writes above - 'cleverer' is always perfectly acceptable in British English. There are even circumstances in which "cleverer than me" is acceptable, too!
Someone might, for example, say, "The teacher thought him cleverer than me." It's clear that both personal pronouns must be in the accusative/objective case. This means that the teacher thought that person (him) was cleverer than he/she (the teacher) thought I (the speaker) was.
Had the person written, "The teacher thought him cleverer than I", that would have meant that the teacher thought that person (him) was cleverer than I (the speaker) thought he (that person) was. A completely different proposition, of course!

In any case, the so-called 'correctness' of 'I' in such citcumstances is very much in doubt, according to the actual usage of the language. Imagine you have told someone you will call on him later in the day and you arrive at his house and knock on the door. A voice from within says, "Who is it?" How do you respond? I can almost guarantee - unless you are an extremely pedantic professor of linguistics - that you will call out "It's me!" That professor would claim that the verb 'to be' does not take accusative forms after it and you should, therefore, have said, "It is I."
On that basis, I would claim that "He is cleverer than me" is perfectly OK in day-to-day usage.