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complete {{the most exercises}} among

English Language & Usage Asked on January 10, 2021

Will it be correct and sound natural to say:
“Complete the most exercises among 20 participants and become a winner”?

I am not sure about using “among” in this sentence. Does it sound correct or should I say “Complete the most exercises in the group of other 100 participants and become a winner.”

2 Answers

Neither really sound right. Adding the number of participants makes the sentence sound stilted. With regard to the correct preposition, I would use "of" rather than "among". So for instance this sounds more natural: "Complete the most exercises of all participants".

The second part "and become a winner" would also sound better if you used "to" rather than "and", giving the full sentence as "Complete the most exercises of all participants to become a winner".

As to reasoning (for disclosure, I am a Scottish English speaker, other dialects may disagree)

1. "Among" gives a sense of choosing a more subjective attribute from a set of possible candidates, and also has a sense of a more fluid definition of the set, e.g.

  • "She stood out among her classmates and friends"

    or

  • "The most whimsical poem among his works".

"of" by comparison implies that there is a fixed set of possible "winners" which are all being judged based on the same measures. e.g.

  • "She came top of her class"
  • "It is the longest of his poems"

2. I think "to" gives a better sense of one thing being a result of the other, and is better used when speaking about the future. "and" gives more of a sense of two things happening to occur in succession or parallel, but are equally weighted in terms of importance, and is better used when describing a situation in retrospect. Examples to show the difference:

  • "Pass your exams to achieve the scholarship": achieving the first will lead to the second
  • "She passed her exams and got the scholarship": this is a list of things she has achieved - there is an implication of cause > effect but it could also just be more of a correlation
  • "She passed her exams to get the scholarship": The scholarship was a direct result of her passing her exams, and she put in the effort in order to achieve that goal.

Answered by blackrussian on January 10, 2021

I agree with your hesitancy—it does sound unnatural. If possible, it'd feel more natural to refocus on what entails being a winner, such as:

  • "The person in the group who completes the most exercises is the winner."

Answered by Jay O. on January 10, 2021

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