The more, the more | Grammar Quizzes
www.grammar-quizzes.com/themore.htmlThe is used in the comparative phrasing of each part, particularly with the more, the greater, the better, the lesser, the fewer, the harder. "Historically this the is not the usual definite article but the fossilised remnant of an Old English instrumental case-form meaning "by so/that much". It came to fall together phonologically with the definite article, but its syntactic distribution ...