"most well-known"

Arnold Zwicky zwicky at STANFORD.EDU
Sun Dec 4 17:35:18 UTC 2011


On Dec 4, 2011, at 9:17 AM, Jon Lighter wrote:

>
> 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).

the evidence is against that.  i reported specifically on COCA's data "from newspapers*, which shows "best-known" well over "most well-known", steadily, during the past 20 years.

arnold

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