Easy way to stump it: Take the output and put it in the input. very + cute -> adorable. very adorable -> no result (may need to repeat for some words).
very very => no result
very slightly => no result
very not => no result
;(
Replace the “very” in your sentence
31–40 of 295 posts
Re: Replace the “very” in your sentence
#32Outside of writing an English essay, I don't see why the use of very is looked down upon. "Very good" or "very smart" is fine and is common in everyday speech.
Big words better. How else will you immediately judge someone's intellect?
By if they say something anti-intellectual like that.
Re: Replace the “very” in your sentence
#33Easy way to stump it: Take the output and put it in the input. very + cute -> adorable. very adorable -> no result (may need to repeat for some words).
Why not just put in gibberish? Why bother using the output?
Re: Replace the “very” in your sentence
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Big words better. How else will you immediately judge someone's intellect?
I think this sort of perspective is becoming a bit of a meme. Not every use of longer or uncommon words is for the sake of signalling intellect or w/e. This is just such a negative, juvenile perspective to take if you are deploying it often.
I was referring to the reverse perspective of perceiving intellect, rather than signaling intellect.
It definitely happens both ways, but I think it's much more damaging to those who are perceived as being dumb, or whose ideas are not considered, because they're direct/plain.
I see this fairly often in meetings. Someone says something very direct and plain, with the root of the problem laid out, but it fails some "complexity" threshold that makes the contrived, incorrect, but fancifully worded explanation get more traction, eventually looping back around to the simple explanation, with no real acknowledgment.
Re: Replace the “very” in your sentence
#35Outside of writing an English essay, I don't see why the use of very is looked down upon. "Very good" or "very smart" is fine and is common in everyday speech.
Big words better. How else will you immediately judge someone's intellect?
Accuracy and precision is vital in communication. I agree that the speaker does have a responsibility to know his audience and shouldn't use fancy words to project intellect, education, or status. However, if there is an opportunity to be more exact, one should take it without remorse.
Re: Replace the “very” in your sentence
#36"very hard" -> formidable ? I don't agree because there are multiple interpretations. I would have liked multiple results, e.g., formidable, diamond-like, arduous, etc. In other words, don't use this site blindly.
> In other words, don't use this site blindly.
Very true!
For example:
Very + Old = Ancient
My granda is very old vs My grandma is ancient.
Re: Replace the “very” in your sentence
#37There's a good reason not to do this: your new fancy word is less likely to be understood by those with lower English literacy.
Re: Replace the “very” in your sentence
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Big words better. How else will you immediately judge someone's intellect?
Accuracy and precision is vital in communication. I agree that the speaker does have a responsibility to know his audience and shouldn't use fancy words to project intellect, education, or status. However, if there is an opportunity to be more exact, one should take it without remorse.
I would agree that accuracy is important, and sometimes technical words can help with this. But all too often people use big words just to sound intelligent and only end up obscuring their message.
Re: Replace the “very” in your sentence
#39very + unique = incomparable Nice, although a rather large group of TV viewers of The West Wing know that "unique means one of a kind, something can't be very unique"[0]. It still amazes me how some of the quotes from that show stick with me all these years later. 0) https://youtu.be/Fvb1e4-YgRE?t=162 or the whole scene https://youtu.be/Fvb1e4-YgRE
The dialogue in that show was fantastic. I'd love to see more shows with that particular sort of stylization. Sorkin is very unique.
Re: Replace the “very” in your sentence
#40Q: How many Northern Californians does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Hella!!!
Q: How many Southern Californians does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Totally!!!
There's a perceptual dialectological difference between "hella pregnant" (Northern California) and "totally pregnant" (Southern California).
Hella Nor Cal or Totally So Cal? The Perceptual Dialectology of California
http://eng.sagepub.com/content/35/4/325.abstract
https://web.archive.org/web/20141008111115/https://people.du...
This study provides the first detailed account of perceptual dialectology within California (as well as one of the first accounts of perceptual dialectology within any single state). Quantitative analysis of a map-labeling task carried out in Southern California reveals that California's most salient linguistic boundary is between the northern and southern regions of the state. Whereas studies of the perceptual dialectology of the United States as a whole have focused almost exclusively on regional dialect differences, respondents associated particular regions of California less with distinctive dialects than with differences in language (English versus Spanish), slang use, and social groups. The diverse sociolinguistic situation of California is reflected in the emphasis both on highly salient social groups thought to be stereotypical of California by residents and nonresidents alike (e.g., surfers) and on groups that, though prominent in the cultural landscape of the state, remain largely unrecognized by outsiders (e.g., hicks).
[...]
By far, the most frequently remarked-upon slang term in the map-labeling data was hella, accounting for 47.4 percent of the slang and other lexical labels. Hella is a slang term originating in Northern California and one that remains—aside from a few brief moments in the national spotlight due to its circulation in popular culture— largely restricted to that region (Bucholtz 2006). The term, which apparently lexicalized from (a) hell of (a), functions as both a quantifier (There were hella people there) and an intensifier (He runs hella fast). Four respondents also mentioned the slang term hecka, the G-rated equivalent of hella, but this term was not counted separately, because tokens of hecka always co-occurred with hella. For Southern Californians in particular, hella represents a crucial shibboleth separating the two major regions of the state. As shown in Figure 7, respondents tended to identify hella overwhelmingly as a Northern California slang term, and its appearance in other regions of the map drops dramatically from north to south. Thus Northern California was variously labeled the hellas, Land of the Hella’s, and Hella capital, and one respondent provided an isogloss designating “the ‘hella’ line.” (In the map data, the Central Coast around Santa Barbara seemed to be the dividing line between users and nonusers of hella, and the fact that the study was conducted in this region may have enhanced respondents’ focus on this particular issue.) [*10: The respondent’s confusion may also be due to the existence of the Crips, a notorious Los Angeles–based gang.] Hella users were also negatively evaluated by Southern Californians, and the term came in for a good deal of criticism, such as Hella is not a real word and [hecka is] probably the worst word ever.
Isogloss:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isogloss
Hella:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hella
>Hella is an American slang term that originated in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is used as an intensifying adverb such as in "hella bad" or "hella good" and was eventually added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2002. It is possibly a contraction of the phrase "hell of a" or "hell of a lot [of]", in turn reduced to "hell of", though some scholars doubt this etymology since its grammatical usage does not align with those phrases. It often appears in place of the words "really", "a lot", "totally", "very", and in some cases, "yes". Whereas hell of a is generally used with a noun, according to linguist Pamela Munro, hella is primarily used to modify an adjective such as "good".
Usage:
Intensifier
While intensifiers similar to hella exist in many colloquial varieties, hella is uncommonly flexible. It can be used to modify almost any part of speech, as shown below:
That pizza was hella good: hella modifies the adjective good, where Standard American English would use very.
Chris's pizza is hella better than anyone else's: hella modifies the adjective better, replacing much.
I ate hella pizza: hella modifies the noun pizza, replacing a lot of.
I hella bought four pizzas: hella modifies the verb to buy, replacing really or totally.
I ran to the pizza joint hella quickly: hella modifies the adverb quickly, replacing very.
Was the party fun last night? -- Hella!: hella is used on its own as a reply replacing very or totally.
SI prefix
An online petition begun in 2010 by Austin Sendek of Yreka, California seeks to establish "hella-" as the SI prefix for 1027. The prefix was recognized by Google in May 2010, and Wolfram Alpha in May 2011. In 2013, Andrew McAfee suggested the term hellabyte with this usage.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25788993
Quixotic Californian crusade to officially recognize the hellabyte (theregister.com)
https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/14/hellabyte_si_prefix/
The Californians: