Most is defined by the attributes you apply to it. "Most of your time" would imply more than half, "the most time" implies more than the rest in your stated set. Your time implies your total time, where the most time implies more than the rest. I think "most" leads to a great deal of ambiguity.
What does the word "most" mean? - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
The adverbial use of the definite noun the most synonymous with the bare-adverbial most to modify an entire clause or predicate has been in use since at least the 1500s and is an integral part of English.
grammar - When to use "most" or "the most" - English Language & Usage ...
Which one of the following sentences is the most canonical? I know most vs. the most has been explained a lot, but my doubts pertain specifically to which one to use at the end of a sentence. Do...
"most" vs "the most", specifically as an adverb at the end of sentence
Welcome to the most wildest show on earth. Someone pointed out the most wildest and I was wondering if it was OK to use most with a word that ends in -est together.
grammar - Is it correct to use "most" + "-est" together? - English ...
I've recently come across a novel called A most wanted man, after which being curious I found a TV episode called A most unusual camera. Could someone shed some light on how to use "a most" and wh...
superlative degree - How/when does one use "a most"? - English Language ...
Here "most" means "a plurality". Most dentists recommend Colgate toothpaste. Here it is ambiguous about whether there is a bare majority or a comfortable majority. From the 2nd Language Log link: I searched on Google for the pattern "most * percent", and picked out of the first 150 hits all the examples like these:
meaning - Is "most" equivalent to "a majority of"? - English Language ...
1 If your question is about frequency, in both the Corpus of Contemporary English and the British National Corpus there are three times as many records for most as for the most.
adverbs - Which is more common - 'the most' or 'most'? - English ...
I was always under impression that "most important" is correct usage when going through the list of things. We need to pack socks, toothbrushes for the trip, but most important is to pack underwe...
During most of history, humans were too busy to think about thought. Why is "most of history" correct in the above sentence? I could understand the difference between "Most of the people" and "Most
These are questions that most people could answer. Another way to look at it: "What TV show do you spend most of the time watching?" is a loaded question. It already implies that I spend most of my time watching TV. Compare it to "What spills do you spend most of the time cleaning up?" which will annoy me because I don't spill anything.
grammar - Is it "most" or "the most" or "most of time"? - English ...
Question: What are the origins and history of using on tomorrow, on today, and on yesterday ** (which in standard Englishes are just tomorrow, today, and yesterday)? Examples: US Journal of the Senate (2006, all bold font added): ORDERS FOR ADJOURNMENT UNTIL 9 A.M. ON TOMORROW ...
american english - Origins and history of "on tomorrow", "on today ...
Today had been the worst day of my life. seems awkward, as today is not understood to mean on this day (the original meaning). In narrative, an event that is happened in the past is narrated as it is the present, as in: It is the 1st of April, 2006. Today will be the worst day of my life. Outside that specific context, I would write
In old books, people often use the spelling "to-day" instead of "today". When did the change happen? Also, when people wrote "to-day", did they feel, when pronouncing the word, that it contained two
Change from to-day to today - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
Which of the following is grammatical? What date/day is it today? What date/day is today?
Today means "the current day", so if you're asking what day of the week it is, it can only be in present tense, since it's still that day for the whole 24 hours. In other contexts, it's okay to say, for example, "Today has been a nice day" nearer the end of the day, when the events that made it a nice day are finished (or at least, nearly so).
Today Was vs Today Is - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
The 2002 reference grammar by Huddleston and Pullum et al., The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, would consider words like yesterday, today, tonight, and tomorrow as pronouns (specifically, deictic temporal pronouns). Related info is in CGEL pages 429, 564-5.
I think it is a good question. When there is yesterday morning and tomorrow morning, why have an exception for this morning (which means today's morning)? Yes, idiom, but I actually do like idiomatic extensions like these - as long as everybody knows what is meant and no grammar or semantic rules are violated...
Two other options (in addition to "as from today," "from today," and "effective today") are "beginning today" and "as of today." These may be more U.S.-idiomatic forms than British-idiomatic forms (the two "from" options have a British English sound to me, although "effective today" does not); but all five options are grammatically faultless, I believe.
Neither are clauses, but "today in the afternoon" is grammatical (adverbial phrase of time), while "today afternoon" is not. I would also suggest "this afternoon" as a more succinct and idiomatic alternative to "today in the afternoon".
word choice - 'Today afternoon' vs 'Today in the afternoon'? - English ...
It's rainy today. Rainy is an adjective, describing what the weather is like today. Sunny and cloudy are also adjectives that describe the weather, so for parallelism, it makes sense to say "It's rainy today" if you would otherwise write "It's sunny today." Compare this with "It's raining today" and "The sun is shining today."