Hello! This week on Ask a Teacher, we answer a question from Paola in Bolivia about the usage of the words “most” and “almost."
Dear teacher,
I am having some confusion about the words “most” and “almost.” Sometimes they seem like the same to me, and I wish to know how they can be different.
Thank you,
I’m happy to answer this question, Paola.
The word “almost” is an adverb. The word “most” can be an adjective, adverb, or quantifier. A quantifier is a word that describes how much of something there is. The words “more,” “some,” and “all” are other examples of quantifiers.
As a quantifier, “most” simply means a majority of a group or the largest part of something. However, the phrase “almost all of” means nearly all of something, such as 90 percent or more.
When to use the preposition “of”
Some English learners have difficulty knowing when to use the preposition “of” with the words “most” or “almost.”
We cannot put the preposition “of” directly after the adverb “almost”. Instead, we must use the two words “all of” after “almost” to describe a noun, as in this example:
When we use the word “most” as an adjective, we can simply put a noun directly after it when we are describing something in general, as in this example:
However, we use the preposition “of” after the adjective “most” when we describe something specific. The following two examples show this:
The adverb “almost” means “very nearly or very close.” For example, if you have a job to do that takes an hour to finish and you have already worked 55 minutes, you can say:
As an adverb, the word “most” can describe another adjective, as in this example:
We sometimes use “most” -- without the word “the” -- as an adverb after any form of the verb “be.”
Note, however, that we also often use the word “the” before “most.”
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And that’s Ask a Teacher.
I’m Andrew Smith.
Andrew Smith wrote this lesson for VOA Learning English.