Most and Almost

Hello! This week on Ask a Teacher, we answer a question from Paola in Bolivia about the usage of the words “most” and “almost."

Question

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,

Paola

Answer

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:

Almost all of the children who got sick felt better within 48 hours.

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:

Most children enjoy playing games.

However, we use the preposition “of” after the adjective “most” when we describe something specific. The following two examples show this:

Most of the children in his class enjoy playing this game.

Most of his friends live in the city.

More uses of most and almost

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:

I am almost finished.

As an adverb, the word “most” can describe another adjective, as in this example:

That was the most beautiful sunset I have seen in a long time.

We sometimes use “most” -- without the word “the” -- as an adverb after any form of the verb “be.”

The thing I'm most worried about is her health.

Note, however, that we also often use the word “the” before “most.”

The thing I'm the most worried about is her health.

For our readers and listeners, what are your questions about American English? We'd like to hear from you. Send us an email at 21voa.com. And please include where you are from in your email, too.

And that's Ask a Teacher.

I'm Andrew Smith.

Andrew Smith wrote this lesson for VOA Learning English.

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Words in This Story

preposition –n. a small word that provides additional information about a noun, such as direction, degree or location