as best as???

[Ki]

When did the expression "as best as (I can)" or "as best (I can)" begin to take hold? It still strikes me as incorrect since "as well as (I can)" connotes a comparison while "the best I(I can)" indicates a superlative.
Is anyone else noticing this change?

[Andrew Dalby]

I've just looked in the Oxford English Dictionary and found examples of 'as best' going back to about 1350, but the earliest examples all have 'such' in the sentence ('such behaviour as best befits a man', that kind of thing) which is not the same perhaps. From the 1800s onwards there are lots of examples of 'as best' in exactly the sense you mean.

In 75 examples I saw not a single one for 'as best as'. I have never heard this myself -- maybe it's US only?

I'm trying to think if I can feel a difference between 'as best I can' and 'as well as I can'. The answer is, I can't. Maybe someone else can ...

[anders]

When did the expression "as best as (I can)" or "as best (I can)" begin to take hold? It still strikes me as incorrect since "as well as (I can)" connotes a comparison while "the best I(I can)" indicates a superlative.
Is anyone else noticing this change?

Throwing in my two (euro)cents, despite us not using that currency (yet), I really like the look and feel of "as best as (I can)". I'm at a loss to find a sufficiently similar idiom in Swedish, but, anyway, the distinction comparative-superlative is not on a global scale a God given thing (and I'm an atheist).