"More well"

English uses "well" to modify many adjectives. Well known, well ordered, well educated.

So after we've said someone is well known or well educated, what do we say about someone who is more famous or more knowledgeable?

For some stupid reason, we turn to "more well, more well."

It's not. The comparative of "well" is not "more well", it's "better". The friend is better known, better educated, better ordered.

We have a deafness toward language or phrases we're not familiar with. Thus, in the minds of the unlearned and unread, who have never had the pleasure of learning language they didn't pick up on the street or in their living rooms, the ear hears the word "alien" and thinks of a green, bug-eyed monster rather than "someone who is not a resident of my country," which was the original meaning of the word. Or "black holes" is an insult to African-American women, because someone who has no clue what a black hole is has heard "black ho's".

It's a pity, though, that some of these illiterate and uneducated people have huge political clout, along with a bully pulpit from which they get heard. They scream and they howl and the Old Stream Media (which is populated by the Journolist.com Four Hundred--modern products of our unbelievably bad education system), agree with their complaint, pick it up, and give it a loud voice across the nation.

It's a pity. I like our language and I love its suppleness, and I hate to see it deformed.