Least likely to succeed?

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:49 PM -0400 3/19/10, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 11:39 PM, Laurence Horn
><laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>
>>  Old Spice has been saturating the airwaves during the NCAA basketball
>>  tournament with its commercials promoting its product by introducing
>>  their own brand-new superduperlative:
>>
>>  "Fresh, fresher, freshest, freshershest"
>>
>>  Yes, "freshershest", although the web hits on it seem to prefer
>>  "freshershist", which doesn't efen look like a superlative:
>>
>>http://creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2010/march/fresh-fresher-freshest-freshershist
>>  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CDmPf4a8I4
>
>Reminiscent of the pleonastic comparatives in this T-Mobile/Google
>Android ad ("smarterer", "funnerer"):
>
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZHgZr3SXCA
>
>(Which in turn is reminiscent of the unnecessary movie sequel, "Dumb
>and Dumberer.")
>
Indeed, and I wouldn't have blinked (or whatever the ears do instead
of blinking) if Old Spice had gone with "fresherest".  But
"freshershest"?  Or indeed "freshershist"?  Now we're getting into
SOTA territory...

LH, who kind of likes double comparatives in contexts like "Old Spice
is fresherer than Brut than Brut is than Mennen".  Now *that's* a
slogan I could live with.

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