I was in a debate tonight over the distinction between “better” and “best”. To my ears, “Arsenal and Wigan are playing. Who do you think is the best team?” sounds perfectly natural. Everybody I know back home says this. My friend argued that as only two teams are mentioned, “better” should be used instead.
Both sound natural, but I’d say the first. Looking online, I found a few sites mentioning a “simple rule”: two objects are compared with “better” for instance, whilst more than two with “best”.
However, there seems to be some controversy over this rule. I’ve read some claims that it’s a pretty recent invention, and infractions against it can be found in Dickens, Austen and other “great” authors. The controversy seems to be tied to the prescriptive vs. descriptive debate.
Where did this rule come from? When was it introduced and why?
The style - it’s not a rule - probably goes back to the beginnings of English. Breaking the rule, either for euphony or out of ignorance, undoubtedly goes back just as far.
That old conservative prescriptionist Fowler, in Modern English Usage, has this to say:
In casual or idiomatic English, therefore, best can be used as in your example. Formal English would require a comparative there, but the places and necessities of formal English are fewer and farther between than they used to be. May the best phrase win.
A most peculiar problem. I would hesitate long before essaying a more perfect answer than that provided by **Exapno Mapcase[/]b quoting Fowler.
Except to note, as I did by example, that the 2/3+ comparative/superlative distinction is tied to the definite, and that numerous contrary uses with the indefinite article are common.
You all know it’s not correct for a golfer to say “I played good.” He should say I played well. But I remember Ken Venturi mentioning this and how he knew the rules but he had to be ungrammatical, and say “I played good,” when the situation called for it.
But I was wondering last night, how do you do comparative and superlative of well?
Well, more well, most well? It sure as hell isn’t weller and wellest.
Given that the superlative/comparative forms are quite old in language (I had to learn them for Latin, and I assume they existed for the old Greek and Hebrew languages as well; can’t say about Egyptian or Sumerian since I’ve never studied them), I would suspect that this “rule” and its violation go back to a time well before the existence of what we consider “English.”
Milton could be saying “Whose God is strongest [among all the Gods out there], thine or mine?” rather than “Whose God is strongest [between yours and mine], thine or mine?” The rule makes perfect sense to me.
