Rules against most?

[Wilson Gray]

Jim, you are correct, sir. My WAG is that the student's natural use of
only "most" for both words had been "corrected" so many times that he
had unfortunately concluded that there was *no* correct use of "most."
Hence, his surprise that a *teacher* would use it and his inability to
explain why her use of it was wrong.

It seems to me that "almost" is headed for the grave, since I've seen
"most" used even in the NYT in environments in which once "almost" was
the only choice of the literate.

-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain



On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 9:08 PM, James Harbeck <jharbeck at sympatico.ca> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  James Harbeck <jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: Rules against most?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>> Â > Well, just between you and I, Barbara, I'm almost certain that yours
>>> Â is the right analysis.
>>
>>
>>Correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't it be "between you and me," since th=
>>e
>>pronoun "I" is the object of the preposition "between" and the object form
>>of "I" is "me?" I figure since the topic here is correctness..... :)
>
> I assumed Wilson was making a deliberate joke there.
>
> I've never encountered any proscription that would cover the
> construction in question. But people make up new ones all the time,
> it seems. Maybe he thought the word was "moist" -- which, as we have
> learned courtesy of one of Charles Doyle's students, is apparently
> offensive to women.
>
> James Harbeck.
>
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