"The Vast Majority of People..."

That's it. Someone said it again. I'm listening to BBC Radio 4. Another interviewee just said, "The vast majority of people...". That's three times in the last two days. It's a useful term which you can't argue with, because the 'vast majority of people' can't be argued with; there are too many of them, vast numbers; they are the majority, and this is a democracy.

I wondered how common this phrase is, so I did a search on the complete phrase "the vast majority of people" in Google and it returned 2,940,000 entries.

I checked "the majority of people", which expresses the same point without decoration or exaggeration, but it returned only 1,930,000.

So, listen out: I think we are going to hear lots more about what "the vast majority of people" do and think. Be persuaded.

In John Stuart Mill's phrase: "the tyranny of the majority".