In Semitic linguistics, the elative (Arabic: اِسْمُ تَفْضِيل ismu tafḍīl, literally meaning "noun of preference") is a stage of gradation that can be used to express comparatives or superlatives.
The Arabic elative has a special inflection similar to that of colour and defect adjectives but differs in the details.
However, there are several words that have particular feminine and plural forms when the elative is prefixed with the definite article,[2] although the agreement is not always observed in modern usage.
The adjective كبير kabīr 'big' changes to أكبر ’akbar in the default elative, and then كبرى kubrā in the feminine singular, أكابر ’akābir in the masculine plural and كبريات kubrayāt in the feminine plural.
The adjectives آخر ’āḫar 'other' and أول ’awwal 'first' also take elative forms even though they do not have comparative meaning.