"most well-known"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Good to know, but I didn't say that "best-known" was on the verge of
extinction - merely that *journalists* seem to have "learned"
somewhere that it was "ungrammatical" (you know, like objective "me"
in familiar contexts).

And I was beginning to worry that, somehow, maybe it was and that I am
an illiterate.

JL

On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 11:40 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "most well-known"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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