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"As nothing could induce the child to leave him alone, however, or to touch anything in which he was not the first and greatest sharer,..."
Der Quibblemeister says of two parties, comparative would have been preferable.
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I agree with der Quibblemeister. Greater would have been better.
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Des Quibblemeister's Nitpicker asks where you got the notion that only two parties are involved.
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I'm assuming that the Quibblemeister thoroughly read all around the given passage and that only two parties were involved. In fact, I had thought to ask the Quibblemesiter about that very same observation, Faldaggio, but then thought that this particular quibblemeister would have noticed most definitely whether there were a third party involved.
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Well, I dunno. Some people just like to quibble.
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Dear Faldage: I have lots of company.
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I know what you mean, Dr Bill. On the TVR Forum Worst Words someone complained about the pronunciation of cretin that she always hears, the one with the long E. It's the only pronunciation listed in AHD, MW online and the brick and mortar OED.
Meanwhile, does the st ending of first indicate a superlative background? And, if so, what would be the comparative?
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fustest with the mostest
Dear Faldage: you helped unlearn a phony fable:
Did Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest really say he could, "git thar fustest with the mostest?"
No, although uneducated and one not given to writing, Forrest has been misquoted throughout history and continues to be this very day. What he said was, his Civil War campaigns were successful because he "Got there first with the most men."
It seems to me that "first, second, third..." just identify
relative position in an infinite series.
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This rule seems to have been introduced comparatively recently. In Jane Austen's day, it was perfectly acceptable to use the superlative form when only two people were involved.
Bingley
Bingley
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Dear Bingley: just for the fun of it I tried to see if I could find out when that "rule" came into use. No luck,so far. But I found this, which it amuses me to quibble with:
Adjective Comparative Form Superlative Form
hot hotter hottest
ripe riper ripest
creamy creamier creamiest
spicy spicier spiciest
fragrant more fragrant most fragrant
well-done more well-done most well-done
flavorful more flavorful most flavorful
Der Quibblemeister asserts there is no comparative of
"well done". More than well-done would be "over done".
If you're talking about roast beef, you would do better
to ask for it by color, red, pink, and gray.
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you're in rare form tonight, Dr. Bill... 
formerly known as etaoin...
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Interesting, Bill. I would argue that well-done is not an absolute and that there are degrees of being well-done. Well-doneness--ha!--is a subjective point in cooking. We could take several steaks to examine and compare their relative, oh, consistency. Let's say the first well-done steak was without any sign of inner pink color, definitely brown or gray, easy to chew, and thickly spongelike in texture. And the second well-done steak was similar, except it was more challenging to chew, not quite thickly spongelike, but more like chewing a savoury wad of gum. And the third well-done steak was similar to the second except the experience of eating it was more similar to trying to chew, if not leather, fruitcake.
We might say that the first steak was well-done, the second was more well-done, and the third was most well-done to the point that it wasn't done well at all.
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does the st ending of first indicate a superlative background? And, if so, what would be the comparative?
Yes, first, for, from, fare, and far all probably come from *per- 'through, for'. The real question is: did the -st suffix always mark the superlative?
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"krEtIn, formerly "kri;tIn (OED2 v3.1) So can anyone tell me what distinction is being drawn here? I don't think I have ever heard this pronounced other than kre-tin with a short e sound. And for a bonus, can anyone suggest any other common English word to have derived from Swiss patois? 
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Pretty standard on the Left Bank to pronounce it with a long E.
The brick and mortar COED uses an italic i with some sort of little mark over it that seems to be given as the vowel sound in thief, if I make out the minuscule scribbling aright.
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I read somewhere that "cretin" is a corruption of Christian.
Where are any "Kreestians" to be found?
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Where are any "Kreestians" to be found?
They're over there between the Krestians and the Americans.
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So can anyone tell me what distinction is being drawn here? I don't think I have ever heard this pronounced other than kre-tin with a short e sound.I've heard and used both /'krEtIn/ and /'kritIn/, but I prefer the former. That's with /E/ as in let and /i/ as in cream and /I/ as in pill. One cognate that I hadn't expected for cretin is grime from the same root * ghre:i- 'to rub'. http://www.bartleby.com/61/roots/IE172.htmlAnd for a bonus, can anyone suggest any other common English word to have derived from Swiss patois?Well, it's a trick question, since there is no "Swiss language" and therefore no "Swiss patois". There are four official languages in Switzerland: French, German, Italian, and Romantsh. Not sure which you mean bise, chalet, couloir, or raclette. (I once ate a a fine restaurant in Mexico City called El Chalet Suizo; they were having a fiesta de las truchas, so I'll have to go with chalet.)
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- "couloir" meaning "corridor" is good French; does it have some particular (ski-related?) meaning in common between English and Suisse Romande?
- And what is "bise" in English?
- What are "truchas"?
- Are you sure Romansch has "official" status? I know it's not legally on a par with the other three languages in Switzerland. What about in Grisons?
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A couloir is a steep mountainside gorge. Bise is a cold North wind. Wind names are very interesting. Nowadays, they name cars after them: sirocco. Truchas are we anglophones call trouts, the francophones truites, and what are they called in Irish? As for Roman(t)sh, I gave it a tiny bit more status than it seems to have. It's an "offical language for communicating with Romansh-speaking persons." Which I take to mean that you cannot force an Engadine to speak German, but you don't have to translate all documents into it. It is related to Friulan, in which language, the Italian filmmaker Pasolini wrote some poems. http://www.eda.admin.ch/washington_emb/e/home/culedu/cultur/langua.html
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I agree that the same sound as "let" or "bet" is more euphonius. I had been surmising someone was suggesting it should be like "beet"!
> no "Swiss patois"
Tell that to my sister, who lives there! There are arguably several forms of patois as all the languages merge and attach themselves to core elements of each other in typical patois style. You haven't seen disdain until faced by a 'High German' speaker sneering at the yokels speaking "this low barbarian speech", or the Italians spluttering at the indignities foisted on 'the beautiful tongue' ~ and as for the French...!
a. F. crétin (in Encycl. 1754), ad. Swiss patois crestin, creitin:—L. ChristiQnum Christian, which in the mod. Romanic langs. (as sometimes dial. in Eng.) means ‘human creature’ as distinguished from the brutes; the sense being here that these beings are really human, though so deformed physically and mentally. (Cf. natural.) So, according to Hatzfeld and Darmesteter, the Cagots are called in Béarn crestiaas.]
One of a class of dwarfed and specially deformed idiots found in certain valleys of the Alps and elsewhere. Also in weakened sense (esp. in form crétin): a fool, one who behaves stupidly. Also attrib. and transf.
1779 W. Coxe in Ann. Reg. ii. 92 note, The species of idiots I have mentioned+who are described by many authors as peculiar to the Vallais, are called Cretins. 1834 Medwin Angler in Wales I. 239 The Cretin is hardly a human being+They have all immense heads and more immense goitres. 1879 Khorz Princ. Med. 4 The offspring of persons with goître are cretins without goître. 1884 W. James Coll. Ess. & Rev. (1920) 270 Bodily commotions+may be experienced in their fulness by Crétins and Philistines in whom the critical judgment is at its lowest ebb. a1930 D. H. Lawrence Pornography (1936) 75 The blood in the body stands still, before such crétin ugliness. 1933 J. Joyce Let. 13 Aug. (1966) III. 282 The crétin of a concierge+has misdirected half my mail. 1961 I. Jefferies It wasn't Me ix. 123, I know I'm a moron and a cretin like you're always calling people.
Hence "cretinage.
1820 H. Matthews Diary of Invalid 314 Cretinage seems also to be peculiar to mountainous regions.
OED2
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patois
[F.; ‘origin unknown’ (Hatz.-Darm.), see conjectures in Diez and Littré.]
a. Properly, a dialect (esp. in France or French Switzerland) spoken by the common people in a particular district, and differing materially from the literary language. In England, sometimes used loosely as a contemptuous designation for a provincial dialect or form of speech.
French scholars distinguish dialects as the particular forms presented by a language in different regions, so long as there does not exist a common written language. When a common language has become established as the medium of general literature, the dialects lose their literary standing and become patois.
1643 Sir T. Browne Relig. Med. ii. §8 The Jargon and Patois of severall Provinces. 1789 Mrs. Piozzi Journ. France, etc. I. 314 At Venice, the sweetness of the patois is irresistible. 1832 tr. Sismondi's Ital. Rep. iii. 65 The Italian language, spoken at his court, first rose above the patois in common use throughout Italy. 1851 Mayne Reid Scalp Hunt. xx. 142 Their language was a Spanish patois. 1893 F. C. Selous Trav. S.E. Africa 7 The Dutch patois spoken in South Africa.
b. transf.
1790 Burke Fr. Rev. Wks. V. 197 Their language is in the patois of fraud. 1880 Standard 10 Dec., A fashion+of introducing children in novels who talk an impossible gibberish utterly unlike real baby patois.
c. The folk or Creole speech of the English-speaking Caribbean (esp. Jamaica).
1934 J. Rhys Voy. in Dark i. vi. 83 She said something in patois and went on washing up. 1953 Caribbean Q. III. i. 24 The hybrid dialects of French origin which in philology come under the heading Creole. In Trinidad the word used to denote these dialects is Patois. 1970 Caribbean Stud. July 108 Patois, used by many Jamaicans in reference to Jamaican Creole. 1971 Caribbean Q. XVII. ii. 13 Same name, different referent+patois.
d. attrib. or as adj. Of, pertaining to, or of the nature of a patois or illiterate dialect.
1789 C. Smith Ethelinde (1814) III. 138 ‘Alas’ cried she, in a patois dialect, between French and Spanish. 1799 H. More Fem. Educ. (ed. 4) I. 103 To ascertain that she has nothing patois in her dialect. 1809–12 M. Edgeworth Mme. de Fleury x, She+remembered his patois accent. a1894 M. Dyan All in a Man's K. (1899) 90 His powers of conversation in patois Pushtoo.
OED2
Strangely, I had picked it up to be almost synonymous with a creole but would not have drawn the clear distinction with literary norms.
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wow, so that was right? You do actually use that form? Does it vary over the States? And any idea how that came to be the accepted standard - it seems a bit odd, given the origin, doesn't it?
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Tell that to my sister, who lives there!
OK, give me her email address! ;) But I meant there are no Swiss patois (what is the plural?). Sure there's loads of French, German, and Italian dialects (patois). I collected a bunch of Swiss German jokes and riddles for my folklore class in college. A friend's grandfather, though born in the US of A, was a fluent speaker. I thought it was beatiful on its own merits.
You haven't seen disdain until faced by a 'High German' speaker sneering at the yokels speaking "this low barbarian speech"
Oh, yes, I have! While studying the local dialect in Bonn in 1985 (and subsequent trips) [called Bönnsch], I was taken aside by a college student who chastised me for encouraging these people from propogating their mongrel German. The irony that one of the earliest printing presses was in Cologne [where they speak and drink Kösch] and that nearly a third of the books were published in the local dialect was lost on her. And this before High German had become standardized. Bönnsch and Kölsch are beautiful languages, quite alive and safe for the moment.
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The original French sound is, to the best of my knowledge, somewhere between an unglided version of a long A and the short e that y'all seem to prefer. It did enter English rather late to have undergone the Great Vowel Shift*. However, the brick and mortar OED seems to indicate that the sound is the same as the vowel sound in thief. So what's y'all's excuse?
*That's Shift not Movement. Nothing to do with Finno-Ugric.
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Well, let's see: a dialect is a language without an army or a navy. A creole develops from a pidgin. Patois has the meanings you listed. It's confusing. Swiss German has an orthography, so I guess it's not a patois.
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I had been surmising someone was suggesting it should be like "beet"!
That's what I said: /kritIn/.
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> Oh, yes, I have!
LOL! Isn't it interesting how passionately ideas of identity and self-worth get externalised in language issues?
As for excuse, Fong, the only one I need right now is why I ain't home cookin' supper! Have a good weekend, all y'all ;)
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Swiss German has an orthography
Seems like the patois of which mav spoke was an amalgamation of German, French and Italian. Sort of a mini-Europanto.
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