Most of the Least
In his travel essay book Following the Equator,
Mark Twain wrote:
"... we saw gorse and broom ... a gentleman tried to tell me
which was which, but as he didn't know, he had difficulty. ...
The most of us have his defect."
* * *
Wait a minute! That didn't sound right at all.
"The most of us"? Surely he meant simply "Most of us", right?
Perhaps not. Perhaps in Twain's time usage was such that this was
perfectly usual formation. One now never heard.
* * *
But turn it around. Say "the least of us". Does it scan? Absolutely.
Moreover, omit the definite article and discover that "Least of us" sounds
completely wrong.
* * *
One can but sympathize with foreigners trying to learn this crazy
English. Twain himself once wrote an insightful and very humorous essay
entitled "The Awful German Language", but maybe he stopped too soon.
An companion piece on English may have been an even better idea.
* * *
Of course Ben Franklin beat him to it, at least in a sense.
His Scheme for a New Alphabet and a Reformed Mode of Spelling
came out already in 1768. This was also a humorous essay, but not in
the way Franklin intended, his proposal to create six new letters drawing
guffaws, not of delight but of ridicule from all quarters.
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