Bernard M Posted February 3, 2021 Report Share Posted February 3, 2021 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. Link to comment
Head Tutor Minoo Posted February 3, 2021 Head Tutor Report Share Posted February 3, 2021 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. Link to comment
Bernard M Posted February 4, 2021 Author Report Share Posted February 4, 2021 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 Link to comment
Head Tutor Minoo Posted February 5, 2021 Head Tutor Report Share Posted February 5, 2021 Thanks for sharing the graph, Bernard. Very interesting! Link to comment
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