more / greater

[Jonathan Lighter]

A more chilling possibility is that the popular superstition that "less than
" cannot apply to numerical amounts has mutated into the belief that neither
can "more than."

If you gotta use "fewer," you also gotta use "greater."

So it might just be the logic of Inglish.

JL

On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 7:53 AM, Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      more / greater
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> From an annuncement of a conference called "Who Is College For?"
>
> "Based upon current census data and enrollment trends, greater than 2.3
> million more students will attend college by 2015."
>
> I'm sure an early draft must have said "more than 2.3 million more
> students," but the repetition of "more" sounded inelegant, so "greater" was
> substituted for the first "more."  Now it sounds simply foolish.
>
> I'm thankful, though, that the conference isn't titled "Whom Is College
> For?"--or "For Whom Is College?"
>
> --Charlie
>
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