In spite of continuous and widespread use, and occasional protests by people who studied language, the prohibition on the superlative of two has remained something that usage guides warn against. Leonard Mascall, The first booke of cattell, 1587 Christopher Clifford, The schoole of horsmanship, 1585Īlso when a goate hath kydded, yee shall reserue the most fayrest and strongest of the two: (If that she haue two at a birth.) Let him also be of good colour, of good courage, wel made: and aboue all things, sée he be sound, and well marked, and that he be gentle, and of an approoued durablenesse in trauel: and as touching his colour, there is none euill that hath all his outward partes blacke, that is to say, his legges, taile, and mane, tippes of eares, and his mouzel: nor none good that hath all his bodie of one colour, save the blacke and white: but the blacke is the best of the two colours last named.
George Tuberville, The Heroycall Epistles Of the Learned Poet Publius Ouidius Naso, In Englishe Verse, 1567 The fact that using superlatives of two was something that was quite common in English at that point, and had been for over a hundred years, seemed to matter little, if at all, to these grammarians. The first author to warn against such use (Joseph Priestley) allowed that it wasn’t that big a deal (“a very pardonable oversight”), but by the end of the 18th century this idea was being written about as a rule, rather than a suggestion. This is an issue because in the second half of the 18th century some grammarians decided that it was unwholesome to use the superlative two they concluded that one should say that something was the better of the two, and not the best. For instance, there is the question of whether one can use the superlative form of an adjective in reference to a group of two things (the superlative two!), or whether this usage necessitates three or more options. This may seem like a simple enough matter, but, as is so often the case when we look a little closer, someone has found a way to make it less simple.
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