Hi,
I don't know if native speakers cringe, but this is the established technical term for this area of study, as can be seen on Google.
Quirk et al 1985 § 7.83c say: "Lesser is sometimes used in comparison to a lower degree: lesser-known, in the same way as less well-known."
Checking out 2-grams with a frequency of 3 or higher in the BNC through Bill Fletchers PIE database, one finds "lesser developed" (38 instances) and "lesser known" (36) plus about 90 other 2-grams with lesser + noun or other word classes. The most common of those are "lesser extent"
(402), "lesser degree" (109), "lesser of" (31), "lesser mortals" (29), "lesser spotted (eagle/woodpecker etc.)" (25).
Best regards,
Hans Lindquist
Växjö University
Sweden
"Somers, Harold" wrote:
> Sorry for cross-posting, but I just saw an announcement for a conference on "Lesser Used Languages & Computer Linguistics", which looks like an interesting conference, but (the point of this posting), does anyone else cringe when they see "lesser used"? Shouldn't it be "less used"?
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