Multiple superlatives

[Bernard M]

Hi,

When we have multiple superlatives with short and long adjectives, how do we construct the sentence?

For example, in this sentence, can we say :

• She told us the most vile and disgusting story I've ever heard!

Or should we say :

• She told us the vilest and most disgusting story I've ever heard!

Thank you for your help.

[Minoo]

Hello Bernard,

That's a very good question. I've not come across a rule for this in any of the reference books I use, but personally, I'd go for the second option: the vilest and most disgusting.

I'm basing this on usage of more commonly used superlatives: The worst and most embarrassing part was ... because 'the most bad and embarrassing' definitely sounds wrong.

I hope this helps.

 

[Bernard M]

Hello Minoo,

I agree with you about the example you cite. But, "most vile" may be found sometimes while "most bad" sounds very wrong.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=the+most+vile%2Cthe+most+bad&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3

Thank you again for help.

Bernard

[Minoo]

Thanks for sharing the graph, Bernard. Very interesting!