Fail as an adjective

[Karl Hagen]

It turns out that "failest" has 16,400 g-hits and an entry in the Urban
Dictionary:

"the art of when someone does something so epically [sic] FAIL that they just
fail at life."

The supplied example:

Carol: "Wow your attempt to push a chair onto the carpet was the failest thing
i've ever seen"

Note "so especially" above. Not one, but two degree modifiers.


Jonathan Lighter wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Fail as an adjective
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> "Funner" and "funnest": freshman faves since at least 1976, in my personal
> experience.
> JL
> On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
>
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: Fail as an adjective
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On Jul 10, 2009, at 6:01 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>>
>>> At 7/10/2009 05:12 AM, Lynne Murphy wrote:
>>>> Or is it that 'so' has become an all-purpose intensifier that goes
>>>> with
>>>> nouns as well as adjectives?
>>> Like "It was so fun."
>> not really.
>>
>> we've covered the case of "fun" here several times in the past.  the
>> summary is that alongside the noun "fun" an adjective "fun" has
>> developed for many speakers (to the grave dismay of many commenters).
>> (in previous discussion, we looked at possible routes to this
>> development.)
>>
>> we then get the adjective "fun" with the full range of degree
>> modifiers (e.g., "very fun"), and some speakers have an inflectional
>> comparative ("funner") and superlative ("funnest"). (the noun "fun"
>> continues in use, as in "it was a lot of fun".)
>>
>> arnold
>>
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