second to none
To the ears of a non-native speaker, mine anyway, this expression sounds very laborious.
Where does it come from?
Is it not contrary to the idea that English is a 'reductionist' language?
Learn English – Etymology of “second to none”
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Best Answer
It's possible that it's an idiom that came out of Greek to English translation. I just ran across the phrase "οὐδενὸς δεύτερον", "second of none", twice in the early pages of Dionysius of Halicarnassus' Roman Antiquities (I.13.1, I.15.2, where Earnest Cary translated it as "inferior to none" and "second to none" respectively in the Loeb edition). Or perhaps Dionysius took it from Latin, though I'm not sure what the oldest occurrence of "Nulli Secundus" (as mentioned above) is.