Best this side
Superlative descriptions like to be limited to a particular groups of things to be compared. People are best in their class, a mountain might be the tallest in the lower 48 states, and several things are no doubt the best inventions since sliced bread. Of course, something could always just be the worst idea ever. One way to express how you’re limited the domain of compared items is to use the phrase this side of X. Now, you can’t go around using this for just any sort of domain limitation. It works really well when you’re talking about geographically limiting the domain of comparison to…well, shouldn’t it be obvious? Here’s some old timey examples from the OED.
1840 T. C. HALIBURTON Clockmaker III. xviii, He is..the best live one that ever cut dirt this side of the big pond.
1914 Sat. Even. Post 4 Apr. 10/2 There ain’t a kid like him this side of the Hump [sc. mountain range in west of N. America]–nor t’other side either.
Big, or at least salient, geographic features seem to work well – oceans, mountain ranges, mason-dixon lines. Also good are salient locations. Nearby pizza favorite Zachary’s has been lauded as the best pizza this side of Chicago. A place at Tahoe seems to have the best mesquite tri-tip and ribs this side of Texas. Now, it’s not clear to me that these claims are about, for example, taking the area between Chicago and the SF Bay Area and saying that there’s no better pizza in that region. It’s rather that they’re picking a place famous for pizza (or ribs), and saying that their own pizza may not be quite as good (or authentic), but it’s pretty darned close.
So here’s a question: if a place in California claims to have the best pizza this side of New York, are they including Chicago in the picture? It doesn’t seem so – they’d be serving some approximation of (proto/stereo)typical New York pizza, and so there’d be no comparison to the Chicago style. It’s not to say that discourse like this
We’ve got the best pizza this side of New York – including that crap from Chicago!
is impossible, but without the “including…” part, you wouldn’t expect or infer it. But, it is true that if a pizza joint claims just to have the best pizza this side of NY, but serves Chicago (or California) style pizza, then one would be justified in thinking they weren’t straight on their pizza varieties. You could call this a “type restriction” on the thing being compared. I think this sort of thing happens when you pick a region known for a particular style. The most complicated syntax this side of MIT, anyone? But in other cases, such a restriction doesn’t seem to hold. So, if Wolffer Estate vinyards is reviewed as having some of the best wines this side of California, I don’t read them as saying that their wines are somehow Californian – but maybe some experts would?
Okay, what other Xs are possible in this side of X? Certainly times are, since times are metaphorically places: All Things Go thinks that Power in Numbers, released in 2003 is arguably the best hip-hop album this side of 2000. Similarly, a customer review on cd universe says this about Go With What You Know (Dweezil Zappa): The synth sounds are some of the most horrible stuff this side of the 1980s.
One puzzling example comes from yet another music review (have I found some sort of genre attraction with this phrase?). In a review of Yes’s 1987 offering Big Generator, one reviewer says Throw in the synthesizers and get ready for some 80s pop, it’s “Big Generator!” One of the most controversial albums this side of the 80s. Does 1987 count as “this side of the 80s”? Well, since side is polysemous – it can refer to the region on one side of a linear boundary, and also one half of an object that has an imagined boundary (imagine “this side of the building” referring to either an alleyway, or half of the entire building). So you can (maybe) say this side of 2007 referring to, basically, the second half of 2007. But since we’re already past the 1980s, I don’t think this interpretation really exists (that is, if we say this side of 2006 now, we can’t mean July-December 2006).
Now (if you’ve stuck around) we get to some really interesting stuff. Instead of picking a well-known place or time, let’s pick something more individual.
The collard greens are some of the best this side of my Aunt Ida’s kitchen in upper Pickens County. link
Everything we tried was terrific, including a house-made dessert, a just-sweet-enough, melt-in-your-mouth apple pie with the flakiest crust this side of my mom’s kitchen. link
The Chicken Tikka Masala is the best this side of Amber Restaurant in Mountain View. link
Yes, it’s all of food reviews. Anyway, we see that basically, the X in this side of X is picked out as a superior example of cooking, and then the object of the review (collard greens, apple pie, chicken tikka masala) is said to be really really good – good enough to be almost as good as X. (At least this is the “literal” meaning; it’s possible, I think, to say this and actually think they are equally good, or perhaps at some ultimate level not comparable). Now let’s take it one step further.
Catfish Jim’s in Kennesaw has great catfish and the best corn fritters this side of my mom’s! link
[N]one of us had yet realized that Bill Cosby’s sweaters were the ugliest things this side of my sister-in-law’s embroidered ski-slope sweatshirt. link
This event capped a period in which Sting became the most sponsored star this side of the Backstreet Boys. link
Taken to its extreme, it seems as though this side of X just means other than X. Now, if you replace X with some historically well-known figure (Bonds has put up the most impressive string of numbers this side of Babe Ruth; link), then you can get a metonymy, where you’re referring not (just) to Babe Ruth, but to the time when Ruth was active. But for the three examples above, there’s it’s not necessarily a Person-for-Time metonymy. Presumably Cosby’s sweaters and the poster’s sister-in-law’s sweatshirts could even have been viewed at the same time. Now, there’s a question of, when you use this side of X to mean other than X, there must be some restrictions. Just totally randomly guessing, maybe if X occupies some place closer to one end of a scale than the other. Take Smart Alec’s, an “intelligent fast food” restaurant that sells healthy, baked, thin-cut french fries. I like their food well enough. But I also like fried french fries, and any variety of thicker-cut fries. Now if I claim that another place has the best fries this side of Smart Alec’s, are there any restrictions on the type of fries that they can sell?