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most favorite?

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According to Common English Errors of Chinese Students (by David Bunton), "favorite" cannot be used with "most".
However, a Google advanced search for most favorite shows 2,110,000 results. See [url=http://www.google.com/search?as_q=&num=10&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=most+favorite&as_oq=&as... ]Google RESULT[/url]

Is David Bunton wrong?

Thank you very much for your reply.

Teo

Editing Note: Teo, please don’t paste too long a http address directly. Http addresses can't be split that this board gets elongated if such a long address is contained in the message.
Contributing Member1,620
:
Hi,

According to Common English Errors of Chinese Students (by David Bunton), favorite cannot be used with most.

However, a Google advanced search for most favorite shows 2,110,000 results.

Is David Bunton wrong?

'Favourite' means preferred above all others, so how can there be two such things?

No, he's not wrong. It's just that there are some very common errors, made not only by Chinese students but by native speakers, too. I imagine that is true in Taiwan, as well. Does everyone in Taiwan speak in perfect Chinese?

Best wishes, Clive
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Teo
According to Common English Errors of Chinese Students (by David Bunton), favorite cannot be used with most.

However, a Google advanced search for most favorite shows 2,110,000 results.

Is David Bunton wrong?

Thank you very much for your reply.

And Google shows 17,700,000 hits for "he ain't". I think I'd trust Mr. Bunton's opinion. I see no harm in using it informally, however.
Veteran Member15,115
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Basically "favorite" is a noun to mean a thing/person one prefers above others. It can be used as kind of an adjective but it is an imperfect adjective with some restrictions in usage. For example, you cannot say "This is favorite to me" to mean "This is my favorite". "She is my favorite actress" is semantically like "She is (my favorite)'s actress". So you cannot put periphrastic words such as "more" and "most" between "my" and "favorite".

paco
Senior Member4,095
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semantically like "She is (my favorite)'s actress"
I confess I've lost you there, Paco! Emotion: smile
Veteran Member45,950
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My memory-chomping AOL browser (may the curse of Google light upon their "help" desk) has a tab called Favourites.

Some are more favourite than others...

MrP
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Anonymous:
As far as I know, most favorite is correct. I've been using it and English is my native language.
:
Σ favorite / more favorite…ranking

nytimes.com=187,000/2=93,500
cnn.com 207,000/13=16,000
Gutenberg.org 85,600/11=7,730
ac.uk 80,100/13=6,162
edu 11,900,000/383=3,110
uk 1,880,000/904=2,080
com 218,000,000/167,000=1,035
gov 948,000/95=998

no interesting?

paco
Retired Moderator: A moderator who has retired.
:
Interesting...but can we exclude non-comparative forms, e.g.

1. More favourite moments from your favourite tv sitcoms!

MrP
Proficient Speaker: Users in this role are known to maintain an excellent grasp of the English language. You can only be promoted to this role by the Englishforums team.Retired Moderator: A moderator who has retired.
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