"Better well known"
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Eric Kleefeld, "Wis. Dems: Internal Polls Show Us Winning The State Senate", TPM 8/2/2011:
TPM asked a follow-up regarding internal polls for the two extra races for August 16.
"Our two Democratic incumbents, Bob Wirch and Jim Holperin, are in very, very strong shape," said Tate. "They are better well known than our opponents, they are better liked than their opponents." [emphasis added]
Language variation and change, or just a typo?
From long experience, I know that journalists can be remarkably careless with alleged quotations, and I'm sure that this even applies to some new-media journalists.
And this example is a plausible editing error. Perhaps someone (the source or the writer) started with (say) "more well known", decided to change it to "better known", but then substituted "better" for one of the original words rather than two. Alternatively, the source might have started with the parallelism "better known … better liked …", and the "well" might have slipped in — in composition, speaking, or transcription — just because "well known" is such a common phrase.
But there are enough cases of "better well known" around to make me wonder:
(link) Royal Fire Protection Inc. is a turnkey company, which was first established in Orleans Ontario Canada on September 18th, 1990. Throughout the years we have designed countless fire protection systems including the original Palladium built for the NHL Ottawa Senators, better well known today as the Scotia Bank Place.
(link) Cabernet Franc is one of larger grapes produced in the world. It is especially important the making of French Bordeaux. A little lighter than it's better well known brother Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc really lends itself to blending with other grapes making a great dry wine.
(link) Baldacci is better well known for his political thrillers and this one doesn't quite fall into that genre, which is a welcome change. Always a good thing when a writer can be diverse with his subject matter.
(link) Her uncompromising stance and strength of character strongly influenced her son, who became even better well known than she;
(link) Niehardt put aside his epic poem to work on Black Elk Speaks, for which, of course, he is much better well-known today than for his long Virgilian narrative poems on the history of the American West.
(link) Better well known was the campaign slogan, "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too."
The roughly-comparable phrase "better well liked" is much harder to find. Of course, that may just be because "well|better liked" is much rarer than "well|better known" (187 vs. 4682 in COCA), so that fewer opportunities for errors arise.
But maybe some people have internalized "well known" as a fixed phrase simply meaning "known", in the sense "celebrated, renowned", where well plays no compositional role, and there's no reason not to modify the whole thing with better.
languagehat said,
August 3, 2011 @ 8:40 am
Maybe, but that's not a huge number of examples, and the editing process you describe is very common (I can't count the number of times I've changed "more well known" to "better known" myself in my copyediting career), so I'm plumping for "editing error" unless further data are forthcoming.
Marc Leavitt said,
August 3, 2011 @ 9:16 am
As a longtime editor, and an optimist, I would agree with languagehat.
Stephen C. Carlson said,
August 3, 2011 @ 9:16 am
The hyphen in the fifth example, "better well-known," makes the internalization hypothesis plausible.
Mitch P said,
August 3, 2011 @ 9:54 am
I disagree with the editing hypothesis. I think it's much more likely to say something is "well known" than simply "known", which I find relatively awkward. In other words, if I've picked up enough from LL, I think "well known" is getting lexicalized. So people who wrote "better well known" probably meant it that way.
dw said,
August 3, 2011 @ 10:01 am
I've noticed that in the US many educated speakers do not have "well" as the suppletive adverbial form of "good" — as it is, I think, for most educated British speakers — instead using "good" as both adjective and adverb.
This would predict that phrases like "better well-known" would be more likely to come from the US. I see that most of the examples you give are American.
Jan Freeman said,
August 3, 2011 @ 10:11 am
Like Hat, I'm a career editor, but I've actually written "more well-known" in a published column (and been reprimanded for it by a reader); somehow it didn't make it onto my lifetime list of banned expressions. I couldn't write "better well-known" myself, but I can see how it might emerge as an extension of "more well-known." (Thanks to people like me …)
KevinM said,
August 3, 2011 @ 1:12 pm
May I be the first to suggest the "fused comparative"?
This could have changed theatrical history. Imagine Mrs. Loman describing her husband as "liked, but not better well liked."
Peter Howard said,
August 3, 2011 @ 2:17 pm
Is it relevant to the internalisation hypothesis that to add "well" to "known" doesn't always just emphasise it, but often (not always) changes the tone of the utterance substantially? This may come from police/legal registers: "X is a known criminal" or "Y is known to have entered the house on the night of the murder." So to say "Mark Liberman is a well known linguist" is to imply no more than that he's a linguist and lots of people are aware of that. To say "Mark Liberman is a known linguist" suggests something darker or more condemnatory is about to follow.
Jonathan D said,
August 3, 2011 @ 9:54 pm
I would have expected "more well known", rather than better, if "well known" was treated as a fixed phrase.
languagehat said,
August 4, 2011 @ 11:11 am
I disagree with the editing hypothesis. I think it's much more likely to say something is "well known" than simply "known", which I find relatively awkward.
I don't understand the logic there. I agree that people are more likely to say something is "well known" rather than simply "known," but what does that have to do with the editing hypothesis? The editing change is extremely common, and it is also common for edits and original text to get mixed up in the course of the process, and those (unlike the hypothetical lexicalization of "well known") are facts, so I would say the balance of evidence is on the side of the editing hypothesis.
Also, what Jonathan D said about the likelihood of "more well known" if the lexicalization hypothesis were correct.
J. W. Brewer said,
August 4, 2011 @ 12:12 pm
Surely the post-lexicalization comparative ought to be either "weller-known" or "well-knowner"?
kenny said,
August 4, 2011 @ 5:45 pm
I vote for genuine language change, based on the fact that "better well known" doesn't sound totally wrong to me. "well known" is a self-encapsulated word in my head, and it stands to reason that it can be modified.
Chris Waters said,
August 4, 2011 @ 6:09 pm
I'm going to dive right in-between a lot of opinions here and say that "better well known" seems awkward to me, but "better well-known" seems acceptable, if unusual, and distinct in meaning from "better known". Sometimes a simple hyphen can make all the difference. In the interests of full disclosure, I am an American, and find it quite plausible that this is this fact is relevant.