"Inverse 'let alone'"

David A. Daniel dad at POKERWIZ.COM
Wed May 23 00:42:11 UTC 2012


Normally, "let alone" goes from the broad to the narrow, the general to the
specific, from easy to hard, from more accessible to less accessible. "I've
never been to France, let alone Paris," is what I would usually expect to
hear. Easy to hard would be, "I don't have a hundred dollars, let alone ten
thousand," or "I can't even understand algebra, let alone calculus." Same
with "not to mention" and "much less."
DAD


Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
Subject:      Re: "Inverse 'let alone'"
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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.

Joel

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