We desperately need new words, people have been using poorly constructed words like "winningest" for too long! But what are they to do? There is no word for "most frequently victorious", so we must make one!
"Winningest" is ugly because "winning" is an adjective which attributes the action "to win" to a person or thing; it does not describe the win. This confuses me because I thought adjectives were exclusively descriptive words; I thought "winning" was a verb but it makes sense seeing as you cannot "winning", you can only "win"; while you can
be "winning" but cannot
be "win".
It's easier to see how wrong "winningest" is when we look at another verb which
does have adjectives to describe it, such as "run". We can run fast or slow and so in the extreme we could be the fastest or slowest runner; fast and slow describe the speed of the run. We could also ran far or furthest, which describes the length of the run. "Runningest" isn't valid because we don't know what aspect of the run we are talking about. The same is true of "winningest": we don't know if the subject is how often the team wins or how many points they win by because we lack an adjective that describes an aspect of the win.
So we need to create a new word for "frequently victorious".
I looked up "fast" and the word originates from the Old High German "festi" meaning "firm" and "slow" comes from "sleo" meaning "dull" -- you can see the similarities. So are there fitting descriptive words we could adapt for "prolifically victorious"?
What words come to mind when we think of "frequently victorious"?
Dominant, supreme, master, champion, conqueror...
I thought I'd go back to German and see if any interesting words come out. Using google translate, the phrase "frequently victorious" translated as "häufig siegreich". I found that "hochste" means "supreme" or "highest" and seeming to be descriptive of anything extreme; "streiter" is "champion" or "fighter"; "eroberer" is "conqueror". Of these I think "strite" and "hoxt" (altered to more English spellings) sound the best.
Let's try them out:
They are a fast team; faster than most; the fastest in the league!
They are a strite team; striter than most; the stritest in the league!
They are a hoxt team; hoxter than most; the hoxtest in the league!
I prefer "strite", it's easier to pronounce and the origin "streiter" is more competitive than "hochste".
NEW WORD:
Quote: "
strite
Adjective: Achieving or capable of achieving many victories or successes: "He was strite all season until losing the final match."
"
Grab a biro and scrawl it in your dictionaries!
What other new words are needed?
WARNING: The above comment may contain sarcasm.
