If Jefferson had written the constitution I bet he wouldn't have made that grammatical slip!
Perfect As The Enemy of The Good
Listen to the latest Lucretius Today Podcast! Episode 226 is now available. We begin (with the help of Cicero's Epicurean spokesman) the first of a series of episodes to analyze the Epicurean view of the nature of the gods.
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To form a more perfect Union
The phrase "to form a more perfect Union" has been construed as referring to the shift to the Constitution from the Articles of Confederation. The contemporaneous meaning of the word "perfect" was complete, finished, fully informed, confident, or certain. The phrase has been interpreted in various ways throughout history based on the context of the times. For example, shortly after the Civil War and the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court said that the "Union" was made "more perfect" by the creation of a federal government with enough power to act directly upon citizens, rather than a government with narrowly limited power that could act on citizens only indirectly through the states, e.g., by imposing taxes. Also, the institution was created as a government over the States and people, not an agreement (union) between the States. -
The German translation "perfekt" has "perfekter" and "perfektester" and similar words as grammatically correct comparison forms but I do not recall any actual usage of those forms.
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I seem to recall from the dim past of my schooling that I was taught that the "proper" forms are "more nearly perfect" and "most nearly perfect" leading up to perfect itself.
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People, were talking the late 1700s here. Grammar is not what it used to be.
The whole idea with that phrase was that the Constitution would be "closer to being finished, more complete, more fully formed" than the wonky, loosey-goosey Articles of Confederation.
The Constitution, in the eyes of the Framers, made the United States of America closer to a real country rather than a conglomeration of individual states (ie, their own countries).
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People, were talking the late 1700s here. Grammar is not what it used to be.
Absolutely. Not to flog a trivial point to death, but Latin also has/had comparative and superlative forms of perfectus:
https://www.latin-is-simple.com/en/vocabulary/adjective/6667/?h=perfectus
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