Reader's question:  

The last but not the least thing to keep a friendship alive is to say to your friends "I miss you and love you."

Could you explain “last but not least”? Does it mean “less important”?

My comments:

This is a cliché that often appears at the end of a letter.

When you write someone telling them a few things and as you are wrapping it up, you think of something else, something rather important you’ve forgotten to mention earlier, this is when you say, for instance:

“Last but not least, I will to run for president in 2012.”

Just an example – don’t have to take elections so seriously – but you get the gist.

To sum up: “last but not least” means, even though this is a point you mention LAST, it’s not the LEAST important of all points you have made.

On the contrary, you want to emphasize that it’s quite important.

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Go to Zhang Xin's column

本文僅代表作者本人觀點，與本網立場無關。歡迎大家討論學術問題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發布一切違反國家現行法律法規的內容。

Zhang Xin（張欣） has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.