Posted by Chad Orzel on September 7, 2010 Not prompted by anything specific, but something I’ve occasionally wondered about: what’s the threshold for “most”? Thus, a poll:
I know I tend to use “most” to mean something considerably more than just 51%, but I’m not sure how widely that’s shared. When you say that “most” of some category of things have some property, do you mean a simple majority, or some kind of supermajority?
I voted for “At least 50%”, but it should’ve been “More than 50%”. Exactly 50% would be half, but any more than that is most.
There was extensive discussion of this on Language Log recently.
For some reason I’m not seeing this poll (but earlier today I saw the poll you did for Labor Day, so I’m not sure what’s causing the problem).
On the topic at hand: There are two uses for “most” in English. One is, “A has the most X,” in which only a plurality is required (elections with more than two candidates are the most obvious example). The other is, “Most X have property Y,” and in that case a supermajority is required because the statement implies that any X lacking property Y are exceptional. I can’t think of an example where a simple majority but not a plurality would be required (note that if there are two candidates the correct word is “more”, not “most”).
If you should happen to visit the German-speaking part of Switzerland, “most” is the name of a delicious apple-derived drink, not quite apple juice (“saft”) but not quite cider either. I definitely recommend it, and I think SteelyKid would probably approve as well.
I can’t get the poll to load but I’d say well over 50%. Technically 50.000001% would be ‘most’ but I’d be more likely to say ‘majority’ in that case. Somewhere around 2/3 I might start calling it ‘most’.
I don’t know why the poll won’t load. It won’t even preview at the PollDaddy site.
Grumble, mutter, grump.
I can’t see poll but I never even considered anything other than more than 50%. In fact it is quite interesting to me that people think otherwise. 50.0001% is most for me. I can’t remember anyone using it in a way that wasn’t similar to that in conversation either, as similar to “the vast majority” or something.
51% = Majority
65% = Most
90% = Vast Majority
45% = Half-vast Majority (There are a lot of these.)
I have an obsolete browser that doesn’t do polls. Sorry. Most of your readers’ difficulties with the poll are probably due to some other reason, but I have no way to know for sure.
My own threshold is ‘greater than 75% but less than 100%’, because I when I use the word most there is an express or implied but not all that follows on its heels. I equate most with nearly all, and so my threshold is much higher than a simple majority.
I couldn’t see the poll here, but I got to it on its home site and voted.
I voted for ‘at least 50%”, though, like Matthew, I’d have preferred ‘more than 50%’, as 50% itself is ‘half’ and I would never use ‘most’ to describe it.
However, I only voted for that based on the wording of the poll: that “minimum percentage” you stipulated. In general usage, I would normally use ‘most’ to mean probably about 75% or more.
Technically, I see ‘most’ as denoting a simple majority, but for me at least, it has the connotation of more than that. For proportions closer to half (but still in the majority), I would use descriptions like “[just] over half”.
f you should happen to visit the German-speaking part of Switzerland, “most” is the name of a delicious apple-derived drink, not quite apple juice (“saft”) but not quite cider either. I definitely recommend it, and I think SteelyKid would probably approve as well.
As “Most” is alcoholic I don’t really think that it is suitable for SteelyKid.
More than half.
Eric @3, do you know if “most” is etymologically linked to English “must” in the sense of pre-fermented juice?
For the main poll, I think I need an “it varies with context” button. In a context where more than half is a meaningful distinction, then most can just mean >50%; if on the other hand you’re trying to describe normal properties, then you’re looking at a higher percentage.
Depends on how many in the group. If “Most X do Y.” is talking about a group of X that is maybe 10 X, I’d expect the number of X that do Y to be at least 8. If “Most X do Y.” is talking about a group of X that is over 1000 X, then a bit over 50% is fine to use most. Especially if out of the other 45% of X, 5% do Z, 5% do A, 5% do B etc. Not so much if you say “Most of the people in the US are women.” when it’s certainly over 50%, but the other main distinguishable group is nearly as large.
Hope that made sense. I voted for “over 50%”.
I don’t have any problem with using “most” to mean 50% + 1, but in contexts where the distinction between a large and a small majority is important, I would take care to characterize the numbers more precisely.
I have learned from political media that anything over 27% is “the American people”. See also “the lurkers support me in email”.
Oookay. No idea what happened to my link up there:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2512
Proper linguists dealing with “most”.
Most to me is more than 68% (1 sigma). I thought most would go for that or 95% or 99%, would they not?
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