Worse and worse

[Victor Steinbok]

Is it particularly different from older uses?

http://goo.gl/mspHC
> And so I shall proceed next to tell you, it is certain, that certain
> fields near Leominster, a town in Herefordshire, are observed to make
> the sheep that graze upon them /more fat than the next/, and also to
> bear finer wool; ...

This is from 1889 (Boston). There is some difference in that the Weigl
quote is about something sequential and this one does not appear to be.
Or, at least, you may believe so in isolation, until you read the rest
of the paragraph:

> that is to say, that that year in which they feed in such a particular
> pasture they shall yield finer wool than they did that year before
> they came to feed in it, and coarser again if they shall return to
> their former pasture; and again return to a finer wool, being fed in
> the finewool ground.

So it's the same, after all. "More beautiful than the next" sounds
rather ordinary to me (even if logically inconsistent), although it does
appear to imply some unending sequence. But it does not necessarily
mean, better than the one before it", but rather "each one splendid in
its own right". But in the sheep example above, it really /does/ mean
"better than the one before it".

     VS-)

On 3/16/2011 10:06 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> I can't offer a citation, but I've heard this logical reversal ("more X than
> the next" instead of "...the last") more than once.
>
> Dyslogia?
>
> JL

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