"Inverse 'let alone'"

[Laurence Horn]

On May 22, 2012, at 7:44 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> At 5/22/2012 07:04 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>> the inverse "let alone" we've also discussed ("I've never been to
>> Paris, let alone France").
> 
> What's inverse about this?  That is, what should I say instead?  I
> find the above quite straightforward, and not illogical.  Searching
> for a short substitute, I come up with "nor even to France", but that
> doesn't sound colloquial in my dialect.
> 
I'd say "I've never (even) been to France, let alone Paris"; the more informative, more extreme, or more specialized item is in the "let alone" clause.  So the "even" goes with the first clause, not with the "let alone" one.  Similarly, I'd say "I haven't seen Hunger Games once, let alone 15 times like you have.  (Rather than "I haven't seen Hunger Games 15 times like you have, let alone once", which for me is totally impossible.)  And I'm pretty sure that's the earlier usage.  Let's see what OED has…

18e. The imperative let alone, or the pres. pple. used absol., is used colloq. with the sense ‘not to mention’.

Some examples from the entry:

"She isn't even pretty, let alone beautiful"
"I cannot say that I ever felt anything like twice as old (let alone twice as wise) as my Polish friends."
"He'd never be considered for a high security clearance, let alone a job in the Service."

and for me, "much less" works the same way, as well as "not to mention".
But increasingly I've heard (and I've been collecting examples of) the other version, which I call inverse "let alone".  

LH

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