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had what turned out to be a rather impassioned discussion in a meeting at work the other day over the definition of the word 'most'. i held that it just meant 'more than any other option'. aka if there are two options, anything over 50% of one of them would constitute that being the 'most'. for example: if you were a flight attendant and gave people two options for food, chicken or fish, and out of the 200 people on the plane, 101 chose chicken and 99 went with the fish, you could say that 'most people chose chicken'.
to my surprise i was one of the only people who saw it this way. most everyone else took it to mean 'a great majority of', or 'almost all'. they each had their own thresholds for this, which were anywhere between 75-90%.
is there any grey area here, was i wrong, or do i work with morons?
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they are morons, but in a hundred years that will have become the meaning of "most" thanks to their prolebrains systematically bestguessing at concepts and destroying a three thousand year legacy of western thought and language in the process, so in a way, we're all kind of wrong
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>>10002179
They're idiots. Most has a quite solid definition as meaning a mathematical majority.
>>10002192
This anon is correct. We've been destroying the English language systematically via the steady acceptance of more and more degenerative slang, combined with an ever-mounting disregard for semantics and definitions and disingenuous political agencies intentionally obstructing meaning. Most can mean whatever you want it to!
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>>10002179
Here's a theoretical (fictional) example:
"Most of the crime committed in the country is done by asians."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Asians are genetically criminal."
"What are the numbers exactly?"
"Out of all 100 crimes, Asians committed 55 of them."
"Most crime IS committed by Asians then. Wow."
Do you agree with this use of most?
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>>10002179
>i held that it just meant 'more than any other option'. aka if there are two options, anything over 50% of one of them would constitute that being the 'most'. for example: if you were a flight attendant and gave people two options for food, chicken or fish, and out of the 200 people on the plane, 101 chose chicken and 99 went with the fish, you could say that 'most people chose chicken'.
That's what I've always thought it was.
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Thanks for the replies, I asked because I was honestly starting to question myself. Glad to see I'm not going crazy.
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People don't have the ability to perceive a small majority so most is not a useful word below a certain threshold. Even if everyone agreed that >50% was the definition of most they would only use the word when they were certain a majority existed which would lead to most inflation in successive generations.
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>>10002179
two different things:
most
the most
you were talking about the second thing while your friends were talking about the first
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>>10002561
i fail to see the distinction.
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>>10002215
Not op, but based on the way you phrased it, yes. If in this theoretical country where there have only been one hundred recorded crimes and 55 of them have been committed by Asians, then it is from what I can tell it is correct to you use "most" in this context
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