I own 3 houses. I spend 40% of my time in house A, 35% in house B, and 25% in house C.
Can I say that I spend most of my time in house A? Or do I have to spend more than 50% of my time in house A to be able to say that?
If the former is true, it means that I spend most of the time in house A, but at the same time I spend most of the time (60%) outside house A. How can this be?
If the latter is true, how do I say in simple words that I spend the largest part of my time (which is still < 50%) in house A?
Or another example:
China is the most populous country in the world: about 19% of all people live there. Can I say that most people live in China?
Edit:
This question is not the same as this one (Is “most” equivalent to “a majority of”?). In my question I ask how to refer to the largest part of something when it's smaller than 50%. It's been established that the word "most" does not apply here because it generally means "more than half".
Edit 2:
Elon Musk knows the word 'plurality', but the other guy doesn't: Video
Best Answer
Most people don't live in China, but more people live in China than in any other nation.
You can say that China is the most populous nation.
You do not spend most of your time living in house A, but you spend more time living there than anywhere else.
If you add the definite article it becomes correct. You spend the most time living in house A.
It's a subtle difference and the technical explanation will have to be supplied by someone else.
Edit: Thinking about this a bit- in the first case you are comparing the case of the time spent in house A with all of your time, and in the second case you are comparing the time spent in house A with each time spent in a similar classification of time segment, so time in house A vs. time in house B and so on.