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> The ten commonest verbs in English... Until reading that, and subsequently confirming accepted usage, I never would have used commonest as the superlative of
by ademarre 12y ago
> The ten commonest verbs in English...
Until reading that, and subsequently confirming accepted usage, I never would have used commonest as the superlative of common.
- dtech 12y agoThat's because most common is the commonest: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=most+common%2Ccommonest&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmost%20common%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ccommonest%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=most+common%2C...
- tlb 12y agoOnly among commoners.
- bhrgunatha 12y agoChoosing between more/er and most/est has always seemed quite random to me for two syllable adjectives. The problem with English is that there ALWAYS seems to be an exception to the rule.
- ubernostrum 12y agoActually, "commonest" seems to mostly be a British English thing, while "most common" is American English, in my experience.
- mdpye 12y agoReally? I've never heard it before, and it was so jarring to read that I came to the comments specifically looking for other people saying so...
- TheSpiceIsLife 12y agoSpeaking of superlatives reminded me of that Old Spice ad 'Freshershist', have you seen it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBV5Jsk6g5k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBV5Jsk6g5k