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less than OR lesser than

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less than OR lesser than

by harshavardhanc » Tue Jan 26, 2010 7:04 am
have searched a lot... but couldn't find answers to my questions.

I know that mathematical inequalities say "greater than / less than / equal to "

but here in GMAT verbal, what should we use : less than OR lesser than?
Is lesser than grammatically correct ?
are there any different situations to use them ?


TIA.
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Harsha
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by Osirus@VeritasPrep » Tue Jan 26, 2010 7:22 am
lesser than is always incorrect. Use greater than when you intend to make a numerical comparison.
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by harshavardhanc » Tue Jan 26, 2010 9:10 am
osirus0830


lesser than is always incorrect. Use greater than when you intend to make a numerical comparison.
That's what I said in my post. I know the usage of greater than, but :

https://online.wsj.com/article/SB114411618421616144.html

https://www.times.com/books/99/01/24/rev ... ndelt.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01883.html

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSWNAS282620070301


I don't deny that headlines can be grammatically incorrect, but do you change your opinion now?


I may be overdosed by CR questions, but still..... I can't accept a "plain no". I will need a solid reasoning and will certainly appreciate it. :)
Last edited by harshavardhanc on Tue Jan 26, 2010 9:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
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by Osirus@VeritasPrep » Tue Jan 26, 2010 9:11 am
Those head lines are grammatically incorrect.
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by lunarpower » Wed Feb 10, 2010 2:50 pm
yeah, those headlines are awful. i didn't take the time to read the articles, though, so maybe there was a pun in there somewhere to justify the incorrect usage?

in any case, i don't think you're going to see "lesser than". if you're going to see "lesser", then you'll probably see it in almost exactly the same contexts in which you would see the word "best".
for instance:
action X is the lesser of two evils <--> action X is the best of the available options
smith has a lesser reputation than jones <--> smith has the best reputation in the group

there are contexts in which "lesser than" could be conceivably be grammatically correct, but i don't think those contacts are considered acceptable usage, ever.
for instance, i don't see any grammatical reason why we couldn't write
smith's reputation is lesser than jones's reputation
... but we just don't.
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