"Most every" and "almost every"

Question

What is the difference between "most every" and "almost every"? Do they differ in amount?

Answer 1

Most, as an adverb, can be used informally to mean “almost”. In that sense, there is no difference in meaning between “most every” and “almost every”, except that the first one is informal.

I should add that the Corpus of Contemporary American English has 290 occurrences of “most every”, compared to 5027 for “almost every”. The second alternative is thus vastly favoured, at least in written American English.

In the British National Corpus, “most every” returns 4 occurrences, while “almost every” returns 788 hits. It thus confirms what commenters have said, that “most every” is a regionalism.

Answer 2

Most every is a very informal version of almost every. Both phrases mean the same thing, but one would be hard-pressed to find most every in formal contexts.

Answer 3

Most every is not used formally because it is incorrect.

It's like saying "we was" is informal. It's not. It's just used by people who haven't learned to use the correct phrase "we were."

Common misunderstanding doesn't mean something is correct.

At the same time, though, language is a living thing. I expect this is an example of the evolution and fragmentation of English.

Answer 4

I had previously read this phrase a long time ago, probably in American biographies of the mid-20th century. However, not having seen it for years, and never having heard it spoken as far as I know, I was surprised to read it within a few pages of starting to read the 2009 biography "Sisters of Sinai" by Janet Soskice.

She says, referring to imagined local gossip in Cambridge, England, regarding Mrs Lewis and Mrs Gibson "The two were alike in most every way". This is not reported speech but part of a description in the comtext of the acquaintance of the local shopkeepers with the two sisters. I immediately thought "Oh, this must be an American book" (this copy is a British printing so I hadn't previously suspected that).

In fact, according to Wikipedia

Janet Martin Soskice (born 16 May 1951) is a Canadian-born English Roman Catholic theologian and philosopher. Soskice was educated at Somerville College, Oxford. She is professor of philosophical theology and a fellow of Jesus College at the University of Cambridge. Her theological and philosophical work has dealt with the role of women in Christianity, religious language, and the relationship between science and religion.

I asked my wife about "most every", as she is an American but I've never heard this wording from her or her family. She said she doesn't say it and hasn't heard it said - I had been wondering how it was said as to me it has always read clumsily, probably because of what is, for me, an unexpected variation from the expected "almost every". She said "maybe it's a northern thing". She is from a non-posh white background in Texas but acquainted with a variety of Americans and Canadians of various backgrounds, racial and otherwise.

Incidentally Google's NGram Viewer shows "most every" as having always been a tiny fraction of "almost every" in [printed] American English, but may possibly give the impression it might be returning to its mid-20th century level of popularity after a continuous and substantial decline throughout that century.