TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Ask the Editor. I’m Emily Brewster, associate editor at Merriam-Webster. – I’ve never been to a more fun party. – It was the funniest party I can remember. As a one-syllable adjective, cheerful must have superlative and superlative forms (funer and funnest), just as new has newer and newest. However, spell checkers and many who think it’s funniest and funniest are completely wrong. The not-quite-kosher states of funner and funnest are derived from the adjective cheerfulness itself. Just as the funniest party sounds foreign to many of us, there are some who also object to statements like “The party was fun.” They want us all to just use fun as a noun.- We had fun.- The party was fun. The use of adjectives dates back to at least the 1840s, but until the mid-20th century it was fairly rare. Maybe there’s something about postwar America that makes people feel, oh, happier than a noun can express. Fun as a noun continues to be more popular, and there are still some who think so fun, very fun, and fun times should be avoided in any kind of serious discourse, but their numbers are decreasing. , and the adjective fun is fully accepted by a number of dictionaries, including our own. Does this mean that the funniest and funniest people are also fully accepted? Certainly possible. Possibly, even. Funnier and funniest are still the usual superlatives and superlatives of fun, but funnier and funniest are included in our dictionary, sometimes labeled, because we have plenty of evidence for them in the published, edited text. They are most natural when combined with other similar adjectives; a bigger and more fun event, the funniest and funniest people. I say, don’t hesitate to use them if you want. It will be more fun if you do. For more information from our Ask the Editor series, visit merriam-webster.com.
Categories: Usage Notes
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