"most well-known"

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Dec 4, 2011, at 8:02 AM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>
>
> 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

COCA tells a similar story.  in newspapers in the database, from 1990 on, COCA has 35 instances of "most well-known" to 644 of "best-known"; "most well-known" stays at a regular low level during this period (zooming to a high of 4 in 2002), while "best-known" stays at a regular high level (21 in 2010, as against 3 for "most well-known").

impressions of frequencies are undependable, and impressions of changes in frequency over time are even worse.  fortunately, we now have ways of tracking this stuff.

arnold

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