but still

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Hi

“we are best friends.but still, there is no love lost between us.”

is this sentence correct? some folks are using ‘but still’ as this. otherwise, should i use either ‘but’ or ‘still’ in this sentence.

thanks in advance,
subburaj

2

Well first, the sentence makes no sense. Best friends like each other; if not, they are not best friends. Second, it would be better structured as a compound sentence:

We are acquaintances, but still there is no love lost between us.

Indeed, ‘but still’ contains redundancy; either one would work alone, with essentially the same meaning (though the punctuation would change: ‘acquaintances, but there is…’, ‘acquaintances; still, there is…’).

Native speakers use the combination (‘but still’) as reinforcement in the spoken language, which is distinguished from the written language by the abundant redundancy it contains, among other differences.