[Ads-l] "best-known" avoidance

[Jonathan Lighter]

The "unitary expression" idea makes sense to me.

JL

On Wed, May 29, 2024 at 8:58 PM Stanton McCandlish <smccandlish at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I did that yesterday! It was in a Facebook comment. On a re-read, it glared
> out at me, so I edited the post to change "most well" to "best".
>
> I think it happens from reflexively treating adjectival "well-dressed",
> "well-known", etc. as unitary expressions, to then modify as units by
> adding other modifiers like "most", "less", "somewhat", etc., rather than
> changing the already-embedded "well[-]" (or "poorly" or "badly" or
> whatever) modifier.
>
>
> On Wed, May 29, 2024 at 2:51 PM Nancy Friedman <wordworking at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Not just “most well known”: I've also seen “most well preserved,” “most
> > well designed,” and even “most well dressed.”
> >
> > Nancy Friedman
> > Chief Wordworker
> > https://wordworking.com
> > https://fritinancy.substack.com
> >
> > tel 510 652-4159
> > cel 510 304-3953
> > twitter/mastodon/instagram/bluesky/Threads @Fritinancy
> >
> > On Wed, May 29, 2024, 12:52 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > For several years (five? ten? more?) I've been noticing that cable news
> > > people have conspicuously dropped "best-known" in favor of the
> > pointlessly
> > > extended "most well-known."
> > >
> > > Weird hypercorrection?  Or what?
> > >
> > > OED has "best-known," without comment, from 1541.
> > >
> > > JL
> > >
> > > --
> > > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> > truth."
> > >
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> > >
> >
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> >
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org