… in yesterday’s (10/16) Bizarro (Wayno’s title: “Subaquatic Psychology Session”):
All about the noun favorite: an implicit superlative, denoting a top-ranking element in some comparison set, but it’s way more complex than that, and the joke turns on one of those complexities (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page)
The relevant complexity becomes clear when you look at some explicit superlatives, in questions like these:
Who is the biggest? What is the best?
These are baffling out of context. Because they are consistent with so many different contexts. But these aren’t differences in what the questions mean; dictionaries wouldn’t have different entries for the many kinds of being the biggest or the best. In technical talk, the questions aren’t many-ways ambiguous, but are instead, neutral, or unspecified, with regard to the different kinds of being biggest or best.
It’s much the same for the implicit superlatives, in questions like:
Who is your favorite? What is my favorite?
There are so many kinds of favorite things (try not to think of The Sound of Music). Favorite places, favorite friends, favorite songs, and on and on. Favorite children and favorite foods, in the case of the cartoon. If your mom tells you you’re her favorite, and you’re a fish (of a race of talking fish, from CartoonWorld), then either of those is a genuine possibility — but of course maybe she’s saying you’re her favorite tennis partner or her favorite artistic swimmer or whatever. Neutrality all the way. (Though the more you know about the context, the narrower the range of understandings becomes.)
