Quick Usage Question ...

[NotQuiteCockney]

"As Houston's most influential businessman, he had already been welcomed in most every River Oaks mansion that might interest him."

That "most" is wrong, isn't it? It should be "almost". Or something else, but to say "most every" makes no sense, unless I'm missing something?

(This is first page of a book. Boggle.)

Yes, you're right.

'most every' rather than 'almost every' is a US colloquialism and not neccesarily wrong.

But it's a spoken expression, not a written one, surely? I don't think I've ever read it before (and I grew up in Canada, so close to the lumbering beast).

Hello MrsB, nice to see you btw.

I think it's a usage but a very colloquial one.

I'm sure I've seen it written as 'most, acknowledging the contraction.

If this is a serious non-fiction book I'd be as surprised as you, but I'm very tolerant of colloquialisms and dialect in fiction.

It sounds as if the book is striking a deliberately slightly-down-home-good-ole-boy note, IYKWIM.

Yeah, I'd accept it as "'most", that's fine.

This is a potboilerish rendition of a non-fiction story. There aren't other dialect bits - I think even the quoted dialog isn't dialect, iyswim. It's written in a Da Vinci Code type style, which is dreadful, and doesn't really go with "most all", either.