Why Are Students Writing ‘Majority’ When They Mean ‘Most’?

Working through student papers this semester I’ve noticed a phenomenon that I don’t think I’ve stumbled across before. It’s the rise of the word majority as a way of describing the greater part of anything.

This seems to be the case whether or not the thing being described would, in the normal course of things, be countable.

So for example, “For the majority of her life, Sally ate Cream of Wheat for breakfast.”

Sally, who either loved the stuff or was doing a life sentence somewhere, faced Cream...