Make the foremost use of grammar...

QUESTION I have done my utmost to find the origins of words like almost, uppermost, hindmost, foremost, uttermost and utmost. Are they relics of a long-forgotten language? FAR from being relics of a longforgotten language, the ‘-most’ words are examples of the persistence of everyday words from our ancestral languages.

All those mentioned come from a common root: ‘most’ (adj.) – which derive from the Old English double superlative ‘-mest’ rather than the common word ‘most’.

In grammar, we are more familiar with the double superlative as the use of both ‘ most’ and the suffix - est to indicate the superlative f orm of an adjective.

Examples are: ‘my most biggest fear’ and ‘the most unfriendliest teacher’, this is considered grammatically incorrect but this Old English equivalent remains acceptable.

‘ Utmost’ and ‘ uttermost’ are variations of the same word, which i n Old English ( preconquest Anglo- Saxon) is ‘utmest’. ‘ Ut’ means ‘out’, and ‘outermost’ is still in use today.

While ‘outermost’ continues as a precise term (‘the outermost layer’), ‘ utmost’ has become a measure of intensity, as in ‘their utmost efforts’.

Hindmost and foremost contain the very ancient words ‘ hind’ and ‘fore’ which come to us via Old English and related languages over thousands of years with much the same meanings.

In Old English the equivalent word was ‘ forma’, later ‘ formest’, which then joined forces with ‘most’ to become foremost.

Almost is Old English ‘ almaest’, which like the many compounds in the ‘al’-group has dropped one ‘l’, see ‘maesteall’.

The move to ‘alright’ from ‘ all right’, far from being a horrid Americanism is, in the development of the f amily which i ncludes altogether, also and already, is simply the recent most. Helen Armstrong, Bedfordshire.

QUESTION Why are American dollars called bucks? THIS more than likely refers to bucks as in deer and has its origins in the frontier days of the American colonists.

One of the earliest references of this was in 1748, about 44 years before the first US dollar was minted, where there is a reference to the exchange rate for a cask of whiskey traded to Native Americans being ‘5 bucks,’ referring to deerskins.

In that year, Conrad Weiser, while travelling through presentday Ohio, noted in his journal that someone had been ‘robbed of the value of 300 Bucks.’

At the time a buck was a common medium of exchange. Nor was a buck simply an individual skin but meant multiple skins.

The quality of the skins was also important, those from the wintertime were more valuable than the summer skins because the fur was thicker.

Naturally as towns grew up in the New World, this form of currency became obsolete. However, the term remained part of the language even after the introduction of the dollar in 1792.

Frank Casey, Cork.