[Ads-l] majority; plurality

[Laurence Horn]

Oh, sorry, I missed it--sometimes it's helpful to incorporate the content being responded to, especially for those of us whose memory can be iffy.  But even for the lemma in question, we would need in principle to distinguish a majority from a plurality if we allow for zombies...

LH

> On Apr 21, 2016, at 1:07 AM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> You mentioned your "favorite lemma",  so I thought it not out of place to
> point out the way it differs from the general use w.r.t. votes, etc.
> 
> Mark
> 
> On Apr 20, 2016 9:02 PM, "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Apr 20, 2016, at 8:52 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>>> 
>>> When there are only two candidates, or in this case two subgroups,
>>> "majority" and "plurality" are synonymous.
>> 
>> The difference would indeed be neutralized in such cases, but I thought
> we were discussing the meaning and use of "majority" and "plurality", not
> about how they apply to a particular case.
>> 
>> LH
>>> 
>>> On Apr 18, 2016 9:45 PM, "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>>> ...
>>>> Just checked to see if the 'super-majority' sense is in the OED--it's
> not
>>> (at least not without a clarifying adjective), although the loose use of
>>> "majority" to mean 'plurality' or 'significant proportion' is, (3a).  My
>>> favorite lemma is a use with which I was previously unfamiliar and
> which is
>>> evidently obsolete [apparently a calque of Lat. "ad plures"]:
>>>> 
>>>> 3c. "the majority": the dead. Chiefly in phrases "to join the majority"
>>> and "to go/pass over to the majority": to die. Obs.
> 
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