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Ways to avoid using the word 'very'

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Re: Ways to avoid using the word 'very'

#51

Post by gruseom »

nmc wrote: post #41
jeremysmyth wrote: post #2

But what if I want to say "very terrified"? As a side note, I was always amused by the number of generic superlatives available in many languages. In English, we've already got "very", and "damn" as the site mentions, along with "really", "extremely", "amazingly" and so on. In British English, you can say "bloody" or "damnedly" or "shockingly" or "terribly" or any of a vast number of other superlatives, not to ignore…

Keep in mind that, however "vachement" may sound, it is (very) familiar — almost slang. It comes from "vache" , which is the French noun for "cow" , but can also be used familiarly as an adjective that roughly translates to "nasty" . If you enjoyed "vachement" , you will be happy to know that the French noun "bœuf " (the second letter is made of an O and an E), which became "beef" in English, can also be used familia…

How interesting that the French use food for superlatives. Do we have anything like that in English? It feels weird to me, so I'm guessing no.

Re: Ways to avoid using the word 'very'

#54

Post by gweinberg »

Isn't this ass-backwards? It seems to me that if exhausted really does just mean the same as "very tired", etc, we should be dumping all these other more intense adjectives. If your purpose in writing is to communicate, then needlessly complicating your speech with uncommon words is a bug, not a feature.

Re: Ways to avoid using the word 'very'

#55

Post by chc »

And then next week we will get an article on how not to alienate your readers with pointless, highfalutin language like "sagacious" and "jubilant."

It's a huge blind spot for writers to believe that repetition has a cost, but large vocabularies don't. This is ingrained in them by English teachers, because avoiding repetition and using lots of fancy words is hard work, and thus that is what teachers value.

For most readers, though, the opposite is closer to the truth: They will ignore repetition (or might even interpret it as useful structure) until the point where it becomes ridiculous, but they quickly get stuck on odd words or language usage that requires them to work to read a piece.

Re: Ways to avoid using the word 'very'

#58

Post by BryanB55 »

maw wrote: post #47
sker wrote: post #37

I was always bothered by the overuse of the word "pretty" on the Internet in place of "very." As a non-native English speaker, I grew up thinking of pretty as synonym of beautiful. Now that I see everyone using it as they would use very , I find it hard to parse.

Where I grew up we used "wicked" as an intensifier, as in "he is wicked nice." Sound any better?

No, but im guessing you grew up in or near Boston?

Re: Ways to avoid using the word 'very'

#59

Post by bane »

sker wrote: post #37

I was always bothered by the overuse of the word "pretty" on the Internet in place of "very." As a non-native English speaker, I grew up thinking of pretty as synonym of beautiful. Now that I see everyone using it as they would use very , I find it hard to parse.

"pretty" as an adverb to mean "to a moderately high degree" is pretty standard for English speakers. "It's pretty hot" means it's more than warm, but not hot".

Interestingly, the forms that you liken to "beautiful" actually parse to a native English speaker as "attractive but not quite beautiful".

So, on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the top), "pretty" has the connotation of maybe a 7 or 8 on any scale, beauty or otherwise. And that's basically how it always parses out in English. Just consider it as a 7-8 whatever on a 1-10 scale.

note if the scale is inverse, it's the same. Suppose 1-10 was a scale of ugliness (with 10 being most ugly) "pretty ugly" is still a 7-8 on that scale. Same with "pretty cold" if the 10 means "coldest possible".

"very" is used to emphasize something. "She's very pretty." Means she's somewhere between pretty and outright beautiful, but more on the beautiful side ("she's almost beautiful" has a bad connotation that there's something wrong with her).

"It's very hot" would mean not only is it hot, but it's a little extra hot.

It's like adding a .5 to anything on that 10 point scale.

So if "hot" is 10, very hot is a 10.5.

You rarely use it with words that have a moderate intention, except for specific effect, "it's very lukewarm" is not something you'd probably regularly hear. But "it's very cold" is.

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