Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[jasonlulu_2000]

The Johnsons' three kids have always been doing great in school. Not the least of whom is Lisa.

Could you paraphrase the sentence above? Is "not the least of which" a fixed phrase?
PS: Shouldn't we say "The Johnsons' three kids have always been doing great in school, not the least of whom is Lisa" in terms of punctuation?

He let me read this book, not the least of which is interesting.
Does it mean that the book is not interesting at all.


Thanks

[redset]

Paraphrased you could say "the Johnsons' three kids have always been doing great in school. Especially Lisa."

Literally "not the least of which is Lisa" means "of all these things, the worst one is not Lisa". By saying it's not the worst, you're implying it's actually one of the better ones, maybe even the best. So the three kids are doing great in school, and Lisa is doing very well (better than at least one other kid).

It's really a polite way of saying Lisa is doing very well, the speaker isn't trying to actually rank the children (saying Lisa is doing better implies another kid is doing worse, which may still be great but it sounds negative). Really you should probably think of it as a fixed phrase, that's how most people probably use it. And yes you could phrase the two sentences as a single one with a comma, which is possibly more correct. Separated into two sentences it sounds more like speech, as though the speaker had an afterthought and mentioned Lisa.

You're correct about the last sentence.