Qualifiable favorite?

[Mark A Mandel]

On Thu, 29 Aug 2002, sagehen wrote:

#Is /favorite/ qualifiable?  My dialect excludes  the expression "least
#favorite."  A thing either is or isn't a favorite, but I see & hear "least
#favorite" frequently.  Is this regional, or is it a general shift?

I accept and use it, but as a reverser, not a qualifier. Absolutes don't
take real-number multipliers, but this is in effect a multiplier of -1.

-- Mark A. Mandel