Saying "most everyone" is much more popular in books than "mostly everyone".
To compute the distance between two coordinates most everyone/mostly everyone uses the Spherical Law of Cosines equation.
Which expression should I use?
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3 Answers
You've left out the most important alternative: almost. Here's an expanded version of your Google Ngram:
In most everyone, most is a contracted version of almost, an adverb modifying the every component of everyone. (Yes, I know everyone is written as one word, but syntactically it's apprehended as a 'pronominal' version of every. Any(one) works the same way.)
Most everyone and mostly everyone are colloquial variants; I advise you to avoid them in formal registers.
answered Dec 22, 2015 at 11:58
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2I suspect that a lot of those "mostly everyones" are spurious, from sentences along the lines of "Sometimes, there are fights but, mostly, everyone gets along." (That is, they mean "most of the time, everyone", rather than "almost everyone".) Dec 22, 2015 at 20:31
Most everyone is better than mostly, because everyone is a pronoun, which the quantifier most can modify. I should note, however, that a by far better option is almost, because most is a colloquial variant.
A pronoun works like a noun. See how the quantifier mostly modifies a noun:
Most desserts are sweet.
Mostly is not a quantifier but an adverb. An adverb usually modifies a verb, an adverb, or an adjective, so it would not modify the pronoun everyone (an adverb can modify a noun phrase, but it's very hard for an adverb to modify a pronoun).
An example from Cambridge Dictionaries:
We mostly stayed on the beach. (We stayed on the beach for the majority of the time.)
See, the adverb mostly modifies the verb stayed.
In your example, it's hard to imagine what exactly would mostly modify. We'd need to move it closer to the verb uses.
To compute the distance between two coordinates everyone mostly uses the Spherical Law of Cosines equation.
P.S. Thanks to the commenters for most gallantly reminding me that most is unwelcome in most situations where informal English is a no-no.
answered Dec 22, 2015 at 7:35
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5Should it be noted that while "Most everyone" is better than "mostly everyone", it's not actually good English? You can use "Most people", "almost all people" or "almost everyone", but you shouldn't use "Most everyone". You could try making it "most of everyone", but that doesn't sound great.– AndyTDec 22, 2015 at 10:08
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10I'm surprised that no one so far has mentioned the distinction between American and British English. American English tends to use "most" instead of "almost". The OP's original example sentence would not appear in a British-published book; it would state "almost everyone uses...."– NefrubyrDec 22, 2015 at 10:27
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5I don't think it's even true to say 'American English tends to use "most" instead of "almost"'. "Most everyone" is distinctly American rather than British, but that doesn't mean it's mainstream American English. Rather, it's colloquial and/or specific to some dialects.– jezDec 22, 2015 at 16:14
[Just to let you know that the word most is also an adverb!]
To answer your question,
WordWebOnline has an answer to this:
(of actions or states) slightly short of or not quite accomplished; all but
So, when it's something of actions/states, 'most' is fine.
The example follows:
"most everyone agrees"
answered Dec 22, 2015 at 7:36
