The Grammar of English Grammars, page 710 by Gould Brown
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and better, are often used as _nouns_; so are the Latin comparatives superior and _inferior, interior_ and _exterior, senior_ and _junior, major_ and _minor_: as, The _elder's_ advice,--One of the elders,--His betters,--Our superiors,--The interior of the country,--A handsome exterior,--Your seniors,--My juniors,--A major in the army,--He is yet a minor. The word other, which has something of the nature of a comparative, likewise takes the form of a noun, as before suggested; and, in that form, the reader, if he will, may call it a noun: as, "What do ye more than _others_?"--Bible. "God in thus much is bounded, that the evil hath he left unto _an other_; and that Dark Other hath usurped the evil which Omnipotence laid down."--_Tupper's Book of Thoughts_, p. 45. Some call it a pronoun. But it seems to be pronominal, merely by ellipsis of the noun after it; although, unlike a mere adjective, it assumes the ending of the noun, to mark that ellipsis. Perhaps therefore, the best explanation of it would be this: "'Others is a pronominal adjective, having the form of a noun, and put for _other men_; in the third person, plural number, masculine gender, and nominative case." The gender of this word varies, according to that of the contrasted term; and the case, according to the relation it bears to other words. In the following example, it is neuter and objective: "The fibres of this muscle act as those of others."--Cheyne. Here, "as those of others," means, "as the fibres of other muscles."
OBS. 16.--"Comparatives and superlatives seem sometimes to part with their relative nature, and only to retain their intensive, especially those which are formed by the superlative adverb _most_; as, 'A most learned man,'--'A most brave man:' i. e. not the bravest or the most learned man that ever was, but a man possessing