the + slightest | faintest + noun – English Grammar Profiler
One must wonder what the precise choice of collocating nouns is for this C2 point on the English Grammar Profile:
77 ADJECTIVES superlatives C2 USE: ‘the slightest’, ‘the faintest’ with a specific range of nouns to express the least amount possible, most frequently following a negative verb form
The word “slightest” already means the least amount possible, so what collocation qualifies? In their three examples provided, which are probably the main ones they could find, we get the words “idea, interest and explanation.” “Explanation” does not even appear in the most frequent 100 collocations, which makes one wonder what this “specific range” actually is based on, especially if it is meant to have some kind of possible almost idiomatic meaning…
One could use intuition again and say that the nouns must be connected to “thinking” and therefore include “hint, clue, doubt” and possibly a few other phrases like: “the slightest bit of sense/attention.”
The top 20 “The + slightest + noun” on iWeb corpus:
1 THE SLIGHTEST BIT 4657
further collocates with the following nouns:
1 DIFFERENCE 92
2 ATTENTION 82
3 SENSE 57
4 INTEREST 572 THE SLIGHTEST HINT 2246
3 THE SLIGHTEST IDEA 1666 4 THE SLIGHTEST TOUCH 954 5 THE SLIGHTEST MOVEMENT 850 6 THE SLIGHTEST CHANCE 8337 THE SLIGHTEST CLUE 831
8 THE SLIGHTEST DOUBT 801
9 THE SLIGHTEST INTEREST 712 10 THE SLIGHTEST AMOUNT 709 11 THE SLIGHTEST PROVOCATION 700 12 THE SLIGHTEST CHANGE 608 13 THE SLIGHTEST DEGREE 608 14 THE SLIGHTEST BREEZE 590 15 THE SLIGHTEST SIGN 549 16 THE SLIGHTEST THING 504 17 THE SLIGHTEST DIFFERENCE 434 18 THE SLIGHTEST TRACE 404 19 THE SLIGHTEST MISTAKE 31920 THE SLIGHTEST HESITATION 290
2 THE FAINTEST HINT 289 3 THE FAINTEST CLUE 225 4 THE FAINTEST WHIFF 101 5 THE FAINTEST TRACE 95 6 THE FAINTEST GLIMMER 76 7 THE FAINTEST STARS 68 8 THE FAINTEST STAR 63 9 THE FAINTEST WHISPER 61 10 THE FAINTEST NOTION 56 11 THE FAINTEST SOUND 51 12 THE FAINTEST SHADOW 42 13 THE FAINTEST TOUCH 42 14 THE FAINTEST CHANCE 41
15 THE FAINTEST INTEREST 40
20 THE FAINTEST POSSIBILITY 24