Grammar Source

Bring your curiosity and questions about English and let's find answers

About

A site to help make English grammar more understandable without dumbing down either its significance or its usage.

A headline in my local rag, the Los Angeles Times, said in reviewing a reprise of a 25-year-old movie that it was the director’s "biggest, and only, hit."

Ahem.  To be biggest, something has to be in competition with at least two somethings else.  If it’s competing just with one other movie, for instance, it can be a bigger hit, but to be the biggest, it needs at least two competitors. 

So, if this director had only one hit movie, then that movie could not be either bigger or biggest, but just "his only big hit."

Okay, no one cares, but I thought I’d bring it up anyway as an example of abusing the English language without anyone’s noticing it except probably me.

Leave a Reply