Re: syllable importance

Steg Belsky scripsit:

> Interesting... because "frazbazzlest" sounds perfectly fine to me.  To
> be specific, it sounds like some silly (but perfectly legal)
> pseudo-HipHop adjective in a television commercial.  "It's the
> frazbazzlest!"
In the right context, you can inflect almost any adjective, as in
the phrase "beautifullest ladies" in _The Princess Bride_ (of course,
S. Morgenstern's English may have left something to be desired in this
case), or Sam Gamgee's remark about his daughter that "I think she is
very beautiful, and is going to be beautifuller still."

But both these forms are decidedly abnormal English.  A good half of the
Google hits for "beautifullest" are for "most beautifullest", which is
abnormal by any standard, and "most beautiful" dominates "beautifullest"
by a thousand to one; for "more beautiful" vs. "beautifuller", it's
two thousand.

--
[W]hen I wrote it I was more than a little              John Cowan
febrile with foodpoisoning from an antique carrot       jcowan@reutershealth.com
that I foolishly ate out of an illjudged faith          www.ccil.org/~cowan
in the benignancy of vegetables.  --And Rosta           www.reutershealth.com