"most well-known"

[Ben Zimmer]

On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 10:38 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> "Best-known" used to be normal. Over the years I've seen it virtually
> disappear from journalism in favor of the awkward "most well-known."
>
> Is this crazy or what?  (Of course, "most iconic" may be taking over
> at this point.)

According to Google Ngrams, "best known" is in no danger of being
displaced by "most well-known":

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=most+well+known%2Cbest+known&year_start=1900&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

On the other hand, "most well-known" has shown a steep increase since
the mid-20th century when compared to "least well-known":

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=most+well+known%2Cleast+well+known&year_start=1900&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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