And wtfs going on with that 36 stars ? I bet he open some internal editor and then set it so . <| sep |> They ' re basically the same thing . The term gradable is more of a descriptive pretheoretical term , borrowed from traditional grammar . It ' s used to described adjectives that follow a certain pattern . For example , with tall , we can say things like the following Ann is too tall . Beth is taller than Carol . How tall is Dana ? By contrast , an adjective like dead patterns differently . The following all sound nonsensical except in very strange , fictional contexts Ann is too dead . Beth is deadermore dead than Carol . How dead is Dana ? The term scalar is more of a theoretical notion . It refers to scales in the abstract , mathematical sense . A scale is a set of abstract objects think points that are ordered in a certain way , along a certain dimension . The idea is that the meaning of gradable adjectives is tied to scale structure . For example , tall refers to a scale of height , so that when we say . Beth is taller than Carol . what we mean is that the object on the scale that tall maps Beth onto i . e . the object representing Beth ' s height is greater than the object on the same scale that tall maps Carol onto i . e . the object representing Carol ' s height where is greater than refers to the ordering of the scale that I mentioned above . tldr Gradable adjectives are analyzed by many semanticists in terms of abstract mathematical structures called scales thus , gradable adjectives can also be called scalar adjectives . Note that adjectives aren ' t the only expressions to refer to scales of a certain kind . Scalar semantics is the study of scalar expressions more generally . See the description of this workshop on scalar meaning to get a better idea .