Scott,

If *winningest *is not standard, I'm sure it soon will be. For fun I Googled
a few other *-ingest* words and found examples of all of them. For example,
*lovingest* has been used by some literary lights:

"  The acutest German, the *lovingest* disciple, could never tell what
Platonism was; indeed, admirable texts can be quoted on both sides of every
great question from him."   --  Ralph Waldo Emerson

"He told her she had been all her life the *lovingest*, truest, and most
obedient daughter Heaven ever sent to a poor old widowed man." -- Charles
Reade, The Cloister and the Hearth

 I even tried *fightingest* and found informal instances on blogs:

"I commanded the Flying Hellfish, the fightingest squad in the fightingest
company in the third-fightingest battalion in the army." --Tom Davenport

Ditto for *singingest*, *laughingest*, and *cryingest*. I remember reading
in the paper a few years ago that one small town painted characters on all
its fireplugs and proudly called itself "the plug-paintingest town in
America."

Dick Veit

On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 12:36 PM, Scott Lavitt <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Recently a high school boy used the word "winningest," as in "the
> winningest team," which just sounds wrong to me. It's listed as an informal
> word in Webster's. I was trying to think of a rule why this may not be SAE.
> First I thought perhaps the double suffix, -ing and -est, but I can think of
> examples where double suffixes are acceptable. I'm wondering if anyone can
> shed some light on the matter.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Scott
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