The older son’s hair is getting kind of long.

He says “I’m thinking of getting my hair cut.”

“Really?” I ask. “Are you going to cut it short, or just shorter?”

“Just shorter,” he says.

Now isn’t that funny. Normally you have ‘short’, which is short, and ‘shorter’, which is more short. But in this case, it’s less short. I wonder why.

Probably an ellipsis thing. ‘Shorter’ here means ‘shorter… than it is’. You don’t say that part, but it’s there. And ‘shorter than it is’, by comparison, would be longer than the standard ‘short’.

The ‘just’ probably also contributes.

Any other theories?