Whatever happened to "other" and "else"?

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bbeeton
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Whatever happened to "other" and "else"?

Postby bbeeton » Mon Nov 09, 2020 12:42 pm

More and more often I hear or read in the media that "X has more Y than any" (rather than "any other") or "X has more Y than anyone" (rather than "anyone else").

By logic, that implies that X is not a member of the "any" or "anyone", rather than that others in the group all have less.

So, is logic as well as arithmetic becoming a lost skill?

(If this is a duplicate, apologies. I tried to look for "any other" and "anyone else", but was informed that those words are too common to be searched and reported on.)

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Dr. Goodword
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Re: Whatever happened to "other" and "else"?

Postby Dr. Goodword » Sat Dec 05, 2020 11:01 am

I suspect that they were perceived as redundant. Any says it all, doesn't it? Any includes all others, so the same thing happened to other.
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