Re: CHAT: Lost (was: Azurian.)

Interesting.  I didn't know about all these examples of Xm+-est being
reanalyzed as
 X+most.  I still think that, since their pronunciation was altered on
analogy or confusion with "most", they don't
count as independent examples of long-O
"-ost" pronunciation...

On 8/9/07, Alex Fink <a4pq1injbok_0@...> wrote:
> On Wed, 8 Aug 2007 23:20:05 -0500, Eric Christopherson <rakko@...>
> wrote:
>
> >On Aug 8, 2007, at 12:33 PM, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> >> A quick scan through /usr/dict/words, leaving out compounds with
> >> -frost, -most. -post and so on, finds 14 -ost words, exactly split 7-7
> >> between short and long O:
> >
> >I keep thinking there's a word I know of that ends in -most but which
> >doesn't actually come from compounding with the word most, but I
> >can't seem to think what it is. (As I recall, it originally ended in -
> >mest, which consisted of the final -m of the root and the superlative
> >morpheme -est, but was later remodeled by analogy to <most>.)
>
> Sounds like _foremost_.  http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=foremost says
> | O.E. fyrmest "earliest, first, most prominent," from P.Gmc. *formo-
> | (related to O.E. fruma "beginning"), superl. of the root of Eng. fore +
> | additional superl. suffix -est. Cf. O.Fris. formest, Goth. frumists.
> | Altered on the assumption that it is a compound of fore and most.
>
> Alex
>

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>