Most everyone?

Reader question:

Please explain this sentence, with “most everyone” in particular:

Her performance received high praise from most everyone in attendance.

My comments:

Everyone who saw her performance gave their approval, highly praising her performance.

Well, almost everyone. A few people did not think so highly of her performance, but they were very small in number.

As you may guess, “almost everyone” is what “most everyone” means.

Most everyone?

Is it good English?

Well, it is, actually, colloquially.

You know, colloquially, you get away with most anything (I mean almost anything, of course), so long as people understand what you’re saying.

Don’t use “most everyone” in writing, though. It makes you look uneducated because you almost never see “most everyone” or “most everybody” in writing.

Or am I so sure?

Apparently not.

A quick search online fetches, for instance, this (Kentucky Utilities provides power restoration update, Lex18.com, January 07, 2025):

Kentucky Utilities said in an update on Monday evening that they expect power to be restored to “most everyone” in Lexington by 11 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 7.

And this (Chicago.SunTimes.com, December 28, 2024):

Death penalty creates more sorrow, pain for most everyone involved.

And this:

From grade school onwards most everybody is taught that sentences in the active voice are the end-all and be-all of English, and that sentences in the passive voice should be avoided like the plague.

Notice, the second example is a newspaper headline and the third is actually someone talking about the English language itself.

So, perhaps I’m entirely wrong to say that you shouldn’t use “most everyone” or “most everybody” in formal writing.

Perhaps times have really changed.

Social media must have a lot to do with it.

Then again, perhaps this is as it should be, language being language.

Say and write what you want to, so long as you’re understood.

But I feel it’s still a good reminder for you to refrain from using “most everyone” or “most everybody” in your own writing.

At the very least, use them sparingly.

Not every other line, okay?

Oh, well, maybe I’m just too old-school and too old-fashioned.

Anyways, here are a few very recent media examples of “most everyone” or “most everybody:

1. Ensuring you follow a healthy diet is essential if you want to lose weight, and for some people, this may mean cutting out – or drastically reducing – some of their favourite foods.

A doctor revealed some of the foods to “avoid” if your goal is to slim down. He advised ditching chips and crisps to see results.

Dr Erik Richardson, a doctor of osteopathic medicine and family practice physician, took to YouTube to share his top tips for seeing weight loss results.

Dr Richardson said: “Most everybody struggles with losing weight. It’s not a normal, natural thing for our bodies and sometimes we just struggle knowing where to start.

“Exercise is important but it’s only a small amount of the picture. It really boils down to finding ways of eating that work with you and your body.

“But no matter what eating plan you go with as you are trying to lose weight, there are certain foods that we know are going to get you in trouble.”

While there are “tonnes” of foods that can scupper a person’s weight loss goals, two of the “most common” – and also the doctor’s downfall – are chips and crisps.

He said: “The blessed chips and crisps: Nothing beats a fresh McDonald’s French fry but it wreaks havoc on your waistline.

“Chips and crisps are very high in calories and are easily broken down and converted into sugar in the body, and can quickly turn to fat.

“Several studies show that consuming chips and crisps are linked to weight gain, and one showed that potato chips may contribute to more weight gain per serving than any other food.”

Dr Richardson recommended that slimmers “eliminate” these two calorific foods – or at least keep them to a “minimum” – if they want to lose weight.

- Doctor names two foods to ‘eliminate’ if you want to lose weight – ‘can quickly turn to fat’, GBNews.com, October 24, 2024.

2. For the physical brand of football that Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen has played throughout his entire career, it’s undeniably impressive that, in Week 18, he made his 105th consecutive start. That’s by far the longest active Iron Man streak among NFL quarterbacks. However, it might need an asterisk with how things actually transpired in the regular-season finale.

Bills head coach Sean McDermott stated throughout the week that Allen wouldn’t play the entirety of the team’s Week 18 game against the New England Patriots considering that they were already locked into the No. 2 seed in the AFC. The question was just how much he would play.

It turns out, it was literally only to preserve the Iron Man streak and not a bit more. Allen came out for the opening snap of the Buffalo offense and then quickly exited to the sidelines for the rest of the game.

I’m all for exemplifying toughness and durability, but come on.

Yes, in theory, Allen was always healthy enough to play in Week 18 and could’ve played the whole game. There’s just not a ton of sense in that if you’re the Bills as the team has their sights set on winning a Super Bowl and protecting the quarterback’s health should be of the utmost importance if that’s the goal.

At the same time, though, coming in for only one play isn’t really in the spirit of the Iron Man conversation, is it? Yes, he’s healthy and there are surely many other games in which Allen has been pulled late in the contest in order to preserve his health. This is different, though. The only reason he ever touched the field and put on anything other than a beanie was the streak.

In all likelihood, most everyone will forget about this in the long run, especially if the streak continues for Allen. And I also definitely don’t want to take too much away from him in that regard. The fact that the streak was intact for him and the Bills to make a ploy like this is an accomplishment in its own right. It’d probably also feel better even if it was just one full series instead of just one play.

But as things stand now, it just feels a little outside the spirit of what the streak represents to get one play to just preserve it.

- Josh Allen’s Iron Man streak deserves an asterisk after Bills shameless Week 18 move, by Cody Williams, FanSided.com, January 5, 2025.

3. In an absolutely wild video and social media post on Thursday, January 2, “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg compared President Joe Biden’s expensive but otherwise unimpressive investments in American infrastructure to the Hoover Dam project, a claim that sparked a great deal of criticism and mockery online.

In the post itself, Mayor Pete wrote that the Biden-Harris Administration had a “Big Deal” for American infrastructure that compares to the Hoover Dam, a clear attempt to connect the faltering duo to FDR’s “New Deal.” He wrote, “I’m confident that a century from now, future Americans will look back on the work we’ve done – much as we look at the Hoover Dam – and see how the Biden-Harris Administration’s “Big Deal” for infrastructure made big things possible.”

In the video itself, Mayor Pete claimed that the Biden Administration and its Department of Transportation had solved the COVID-era supply chain bottlenecks, and solved the problems of the reaction to the disease. He said, in that part of the clip, “President Biden arrived in office with a sober recognition of the scale of the problems our country was facing.”

Speaking a bit later on in the clip, Mayor Pete claimed that the Biden Administration had managed to create millions of jobs, a claim often pushed by members of the Biden-Harris presidency but disputed by most everyone else, as the jobs “created,” as Mayor Pete put it, were much rather people returning to work after COVID than new jobs created under the Biden presidency.

As could be expected, Mayor Pete faced a heavy dose of criticism and mockery over the claims made in the post and video. For example, Mollie Hemmingway, the Editor-in-Chief for The Federalist, jokingly commented, “sir, are you high”? Joking about Mayor Pete’s accomplishments, or more accurately the lack thereof, a commenter on Hemmingway’s comment said, “wait. what did they do for infrastructure? 7 charging stations and a high-speed train to no where.”

Hemmingway was far from the only one to sound off on Mayor Pete’s absurd claims. John Hawkins, a conservative X personality and author, chimed in as well, saying, “If you clowns had been in charge of building the Hoover Dam, it would have cost 400 billion dollars and we wouldn’t have started building it yet.”

In much the same vein, X personality Chad Felix Greene posted, “The entire theme of this administration has been boasting of being the most incredible, history-making, innovative and celebrated administration of all time, despite no one being able to name a single thing they’ve done. It is obnoxious, but they keep strutting around…”

- “Sir, Are You High?”: Pete Buttigieg Gets Hilariously Ridiculed after Making Wild Claim about Biden Accomplishments, TheAmericanTribune.com, January 5, 2025.

本文仅代表作者本人观点，与本网立场无关。欢迎大家讨论学术问题，尊重他人，禁止人身攻击和发布一切违反国家现行法律法规的内容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：张欣）