Answers to Questions About Usage #3

Answers to Questions About Usage #3 Answers to Questions About Usage #3 Answers to Questions About Usage #3 By Mark Nichol Here are several questions from DailyWritingTips.com readers about the wording of various phrases, followed by my responses. 1. In a book I just read, the author twice uses the expression â€Å"least worse.† I understand what he means, but this strikes me as a lousy neologism, and I sense that it is unjustifiable under â€Å"the rules† yet I am unable to devise an alternative that isn’t wordy or top-heavy. Can you suggest something? I came up with several more specific analogues: â€Å"least onerous,† â€Å"least egregious,† and â€Å"least unfortunate.† I suppose the reason these are acceptable and â€Å"least worse† isn’t is that worse, unlike the others, is a comparative adjective (â€Å"least bad† is better but still awkward) linked with a word denoting the most minimal amount. I’d use an appropriate noncomparative adjective such as the three I listed in the first sentence of this paragraph in place of worse. 2. What does very really mean? In â€Å"John held up a very full bucket,† if a bucket is full, then how is a very full bucket any more full? Even worse is â€Å"very, very†: A very, very full bucket must be even â€Å"fuller† than the very full one. In formal, straightforward usage, very is almost invariably superfluous, but it has its place in more colloquial language. For example, it’s appropriate in a remark about a bucket containing an overflowing liquid or a heaped solid substance: â€Å"That’s a very full bucket!† 3. I have a question about the phrase â€Å"graduating high school† (or college). I have always thought that high schools and colleges were already graduated- with, for example, ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades. Should the construction be â€Å"graduated from† rather than simply graduated? Yes. â€Å"Graduated high school† and similar phrases are holdovers from a twentieth-century effort to truncate the earlier usage â€Å"was graduated from,† but the effort was taken too far. â€Å"Graduated high school† occurs at times, but â€Å"graduated from high school† is standard. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Style category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:70 Idioms with HeartTaser or Tazer? Tazing or Tasering?25 Idioms with Clean