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Replace the “very” in your sentence

losethevery.com

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Re: Replace the “very” in your sentence

#211

Post by johnpublic »

zeroxp wrote: post #194
Planktonne wrote: post #191

This is one of the most pernicious pieces of cargo-cult writing advice that gets smeared all over the internet. When writing, you should think carefully about your word choice, and adapt it for your audience, context, intended effect, etc. "Lose the very" is the exact opposite of thinking carefully. It ignores all the subtle shades of meaning that different words bring. Almost no words have direct swap-in synonyms. I…

When you say very different, you could have just said skittish. "It's skittish from what you intended". Isn't that much better?

actually, the website says "very different = distinct". So "it's distinct from what you intended."

Which I actually prefer.

Re: Replace the “very” in your sentence

#212

Post by Daub »

KaiserPro wrote: post #187

As a native speaker, my reply is: no[1] Firstly this appears to be a way to boast about the size of your vocabulary. That's great, but, frankly you are walking into a bigarsed zone of unintended connotations. Its more than likely to do the exact opposite. Second, half of the suggestions are wrong. for example "very ashamed" is not the same as repentant. shame and regret are two similar things, but not the same. same…

> All of you who want to sound either more "well read", or more native, this website will lead you astray.

I wholeheartedly agree that excessive and unnecessary verbiage can be a tiresome impediment to the clear transmission of ideas.

That being said ‘the more words you know, the more things you can say’ as my old English teacher used to say. A wide vocabulary is particularly useful when addressing complex subjects.

Re: Replace the “very” in your sentence

#215

Post by dmichulke »

jaza wrote: post #192
dmichulke wrote: post #122

Obligatory reminder of the elative: In German: sehr schnell (very fast) -> blitzschnell (lightning fast) sehr gross (very big) -> riesengross (giant big) sehr reich (very rich) -> steinreich (stone rich) sehr arm (very poor) -> bettelarm (beggar poor) It's a bit easier vocab-wise for foreigners. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elative_(gradation)

"Lightning fast" is probably the most-recognised expression for "very fast" in English too. Not sure that there's an obvious candidate for "very big". And we have "stinking rich" and "dirt poor". A few more: "stone deaf", "stark naked", "blind drunk", "certifiably insane", "squeaky clean", "dog tired", "piping hot", "ice cold".

Is there a list of these word combinations?

In German you have hundreds of those (incl. "eiskalt" - ice cold and "hundemüde" - dog tired) but I failed to find a list -.-

Re: Replace the “very” in your sentence

#216

Post by imwillofficial »

thayne wrote: post #41
jordanwallwork wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it frustrating that you have to click to refresh the result. Why it doesnt't autorefresh after a short period makes no sense to me. I kept typing in words and thinking it was getting no results before realising I had to keep hitting the refresh button

it doesn't even refresh if you hit the "enter" key on your keyboard.

Tough crowd hahahaha

Re: Replace the “very” in your sentence

#217

Post by GistNoesis »

Why do we still have to fill the database ?

This used to be a task for word vectors woman - man + king = queen

But thinking more about it, isn't it a task for GPT-3 now ?

You write your input prompt with some random known example and you ask the last one for completion.

"very + energetic = spirited \n very + nervous = shrinking \n very + arrogant = brazen \n very + upset = fuming \n very + wet = "

It would be fun to be able to apply multiple times very to a word to see what you get, and maybe trace a Dynkin diagram of the English language.

Re: Replace the “very” in your sentence

#218

Post by olau »

skrebbel wrote: post #161

You can also just drop the “very”. There’s no need for a fancy word to replace the thing you’re very very about. For example, if you’re writing “very tall”, change it into “tall” and re-read the sentence. It’ll be better. I learned this by reading Scott Adams’ excellent 3-minute essay on writing: https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/the...

Well.

Re: Replace the “very” in your sentence

#219

Post by wongarsu »

koolba wrote: post #205
KaiserPro wrote: post #187

As a native speaker, my reply is: no[1] Firstly this appears to be a way to boast about the size of your vocabulary. That's great, but, frankly you are walking into a bigarsed zone of unintended connotations. Its more than likely to do the exact opposite. Second, half of the suggestions are wrong. for example "very ashamed" is not the same as repentant. shame and regret are two similar things, but not the same. same…

> using 'very' is perfectly fine, just try to limit it's use to once a sentence at the very minimum(no you can't swap very minimum for "the least" maybe "at the very least"). s/min/max/g I like to imagine it always being written in italics. If you don’t want it standing out and being very noticeable, then don’t use it at all.

I think the sentence can be read both ways (which is arguably worse): it's either "limit it to once a sentence, or limit it more" or "limit it to (once or more)".

Which goes to show that to communicate clearly a well-thought-out sentence structure is more important than fretting over the exact word to use.

Re: Replace the “very” in your sentence

#220

Post by OJFord »

Tainnor wrote: post #203

Usage of "very" in the collected works of Shakespeare's: https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/search/search-results.... (some of these are false positives, e.g. "this very sword", where it's not used as an intensifier) I don't understand this quest that certain pencil-pushers seem to have with wanting to restrict the usage of certain words or even entire grammatical constructions (e.g. the crusade against the passiv…

I recall getting into trouble at school for (probably argumentatively & disruptively) pointing out occurrences of 'said' in published works, which is the word I remember being taught not to use more so than 'very'.

They wanted every bit of dialogue to be broadcast or yelled or shouted or explained or cried and so on. If you actually read something like that it's bloody tedious, unless you're going for Homeric I think the better advice is to simply say 'said' more often!

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