Archaic “exceeding great,” not modern “exceedingly great”

Consistent, archaic adverbial use without the suffix {-ly}.

The Book of Mormon has fifty-seven instances of “exceeding great,” every time consistently without an {-ly} suffix, as in earlier English. First, if Joseph Smith had authored the English of the text, he probably would have used far fewer instances of “exceeding great.” Second, if he had authored this phrase, he probably would have used a mixture of “exceeding great” and “exceedingly great.”

This is the fourth most that occur in a single text, and the most since 1657 (60×), 172 years earlier. The two other texts with more than the Book of Mormon were published in 1578 and 1647. These three texts have a minimum of 2.5 times as many words as the Book of Mormon, so its intensity (rate × instances) is very high, ranking fourth among the texts of EEBO. A 1649 translation of the Koran ranks just above it in intensity (the link is to a 1688 printing).

The 1609 Douay Old Testament has thirty-eight instances of “exceeding great,” many more than the 1611 King James Bible, which has only eleven. One pseudo-archaic text has ten, written by a Scottish English author, Matthew Linning, and published in 1809.

“Exceeding great” was most popular in the early modern period. EEBO shows that peak popularity was between 1591 and 1620. “Exceedingly great” gradually began to be used more often after 1700.

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