Re: "one of the only" really bad English?

On Sat, 30 Aug 2008 22:00:40 +0100, HVS <usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On 30 Aug 2008, Prai Jei wrote

Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t set the following eddies
spiralling through the space-time continuum:

<http://moralize.us/view/30>
"It's just one of the only jobs out there."

Is that totally stupid wording, or does it make any sense to
anyone here?

It seems perfectly OK as part of an expression, but the absolute
usage quoted is wrong. The implication is "one from a very small
subset of a larger set" - and a qualifying clause should follow,
which ought to give the actual cardinality of the small subset.

"Deuterium is one of the only four stable isotopes that have odd
numbers of protons and neutrons in the nucleus."

"One of the only four" sounds deeply unidiomatic to me: I'm fairly
sure I'd expect to read either "...one of only four..." or "...one of
the four...".

AOL.
--

Regards,

Chuck Riggs
Near Dublin, Ireland
.

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