Linguist: 'Most' means 80 to 95 percent

TEL AVIV, Israel, Nov. 25 (UPI) -- An Israeli linguist says she has conducted a study that quantifies the meaning of the word "most."

Professor Mira Ariel of Tel Aviv University says her research "is quite shocking for the linguistics world" and proves some of her fellow linguists are wrong in their definition of the word "most."

Ariel says academic linguists agree the word "most" generally means 51 percent to 99 percent of a group of people or objects.

"Some linguists have argued that the word 'most' includes the 100 percent value as well, and that the meaning of 'most' is identical to that of 'more than half.' My study has proved them wrong," she said.

Ariel and her colleagues presented 60 research participants from several English-speaking countries with a dialogue in which the work "most" was used, and then recorded the participants' responses to questions. She reports the participants understood "most" to mean about 80 percent to 95 percent of a group and not the much larger range of 51 percent to 99 percent.

She cautioned that while "most" means 80 percent to 95 percent today, the meaning could change. "That's the nature of language and communication. It changes in the span of a few centuries."

Ariel's research is to be published this year by the Cambridge University Press.