Funnest Post Ever!

A recent newspaper column referred to Minneapolis as the "funnest" city in America. The term came from a comment by a spokesman for the mayor in support of a 4:00 AM bar closing time, and in the context of the piece it was repeated with sarcastic, if not outright mocking, intent. However, it did have quotation marks around it, which indicates to me that the columnist does not consider "funnest" to be a legitimate word.

This prevailing reluctance to accept the superlative of "fun" has gotten me into many arguments with many dilettante grammarians. The disagreements often make me think of Frost's "Mending Wall."

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says it again, "Funnest isn't a word."

OK, perhaps I've taken some liberties with the poem, but that is usually the extent of the case against "funnest." People have heard somewhere that it's not a word, and repeating that proscription helps them feel as though they are intelligent, perhaps as though they are defending the language against abject vitiation, I don't know. When you ask why, these folks, like Frost's "stone savage," can only repeat their one line: "Funnest isn't a word."

Let me tell you something: "Funnest" IS a word! And so is "funner." They are not the most descriptive of words, and I would advise against using them in any kind of formal essay, just as I would recommend using words other than "thing" or "great." But as long as "fun" is used as an adjective, those two inflected forms are perfectly valid. Notice that I wrote "is used" rather than "may be used." The latter connotes permission and implies that there are grammar police out enforcing the rigid laws of some official grammar body. This ain't the case. Grammar and usage should be descriptive, not prescriptive. If you use any supposedly nonstandard form long enough, and convince enough others to join you, that nonstandard form will become standard. "Fun" has been regularly used as an adjective for well over fifty years. The same people who rail against "funner" and "funnest" have no qualms about describing a "fun trip" to the mall or asking if you had a "fun time" at the park. Standard practice for creating comparative and superlative forms of monosyllabic adjectives is to use inflection. Thus, we get "funner" and "funnest."

I know this won't convince all of you dilettantes, but please come back armed with something more potent than that one line. And please don't turn me in to the grammar police.