Intensifiers

Some grammarians say intensifiers have three functions: to emphasize, to amplify, and to downtone. A word may have more than one function. Unless you are a student of grammar and planning to be a teacher of the English language, you don't have to know these terms. It is important, though, to understand what kind of meaning they give to the words they modify. 

Important Note:

You'll hear native English speakers using intensifiers in normal everyday conversational English, and it won't conform to the standards of "good" English. For example, in the desire to show intensity of emotion, we say things that are redundant. We say them all the time, but we wouldn't write them in any kind of formal, i.e., academic or business writing. Here are a few examples:

• "I'm totally finished with Fred. I'm never dating him again." Well, you can't be partially finished, or "totally" finished. You're finished, or you're not finished. The word "totally" is redundant.

• "He really screamed when his boss fired him." A scream is a very loud noise! The word "really" doesn't make his scream any louder, because it's already very loud without the word "really".

Here's another example: Three friends go to a concert together. After the concert, they go to visit Vicky, who hasn't been to the concert. When she asks if they liked the concert, Johnny says with obvious pleasure, "Ohhhh, it was a good concert." Nessa says, "Yes! It was a really good concert!" Howard says, "Wow! It was a really really good concert!" Clearly, they enjoyed the concert. Who enjoyed it most? Well, there's no way to know. Listening to Johnny's voice, Vicky was sure that he enjoyed the concert very much. Did Howard enjoy it more, because he said "really really"? We'll never know. But what's important here, is to get an idea about how Americans talk to each other when they're speaking informally.

Imagine a scale for these intensifiers that goes from one to ten. 'One' is the lowest number, and gives a mild effect to the verb. 'Ten' gives the verb the strongest effect. Here are a few examples of low-level intensifiers:

• "I kind of like him."  (I like him a little bit.)

• "He rather likes her." (He likes her--a little bit more than 'kind of'.)

• "We almost gave up." (It doesn't sound like a high-level emotion. They almost gave up, but they didn't.)

 Some show a higher level of emotion:

• "She really scolded him." (You can scold someone with a low tone of voice, and very few words. The word really tells us that the person doing the scolding was doing it loudly, and had a lot to say!)

• "He had barely finished the test at the moment the teacher said "Stop". (That sentence doesn't sound like there was a crisis, but if the person taking the test had been trying very hard to finish the test, he finished just in the nick of time: at the last possible moment; barely.)

 Some show a very high level of feeling:

• "I completely give up!" (The speaker is feeling exasperated! (extremely annoyed/irritated/frustrated)

• "I definitely hate our new house!" (No doubt the speaker is quite unhappy. 'hate' is a very strong word, as is 'definitely'.)

You will see that some words can be more than one place on the scale, i.e., showing low-level emotion in one sentence, and high-level in another. Much depends on the context of the sentence, and the intent of the speaker. You just read the sentence with "barely" in it. Compare it to this sentence:

• "They barely had time to rescue the children from the burning house!"

1.  Emphasizers: usually precede the word they are emphasizing. When a word is used as an emphasizer, it cannot be the first word in the sentence. Few words used as emphasizers can be used as nouns. 

• "Larry really can't stand any more stress!" 

• "We simply feel this is a bad decision." 

• "Father literally kicked the salesman out of the house."   

2.  Amplifiers: There are two kinds: maximizers and boosters. These show a high degree of emotion.

• "Cindy's teacher absolutely refuses to let lazy students stay in his class." 

• "Cinderella wanted to go to the ball so much."

• "Many Brazilians greatly enjoy Carnaval." 

•  "Betty all but screamed when her new clothes got stained." (She was really upset! "all but" means that Betty did everything to show her anger except scream.)

3.  Downtoners: lower the effect of the verb. There are four kinds of downtoners: compromisers, diminishers, minimizers, and approximators.

• Compromisers: slightly reduce the force of the verb. 

• "Kevin kind of plays the piano." (He knows a little bit about playing the piano, but not very much.

• Diminishers: show a small amount of positive meaning, i.e., "He arrived at the meeting slightly late." (just a few minutes)  

•  "Stuart felt slightly ill." (Not seriously ill; just a little sick.)

•  "Aunt Tilly's dinner was almost ruined because we arrived late." (Dinner was nearly ruined, but it wasn't.)

•  "Jacob sort of  blushed when Ramona spoke to him." (sort of  and kind of, mean 'just a little bit'.) 

• Minimizers modify the degree of truth of what the verb says. 

• "We scarcely knew what to say." (We were so surprised that we had difficulty making a comment.)

• "We could hardly catch our breath." (We could certainly breathe, but we were feeling out of breath; breathing hard from running fast, or being extremely surprised, frightened, etc.)

• Approximators deny the truth of what the verb states. 

• "She nearly left him." (She did not leave, but she had been planning to.) 

• "Saturday is just about the last chance he has to retake the test. (It isn't definitely the last chance; there may be one more.)

Don't worry about the classifications of intensifiers. Just remember that they show varying degrees of modification to the verb.

Can you recognize the level of intensifier in each sentence? Is it of slight intensity?  Moderate?  High? In some instances, there isn't a definite right or wrong answer. After you do the exercise, check to see how we rated them.

1) This book is very interesting.  Answer Moderate

2) Doug sings exceedingly well.   Answer High

3) The judges overwhelmingly voted Susan the girl with the prettiest smile.   Answer High

4) Geoffrey will be graduating much earlier than everyone else in his class.  Answer High

5) Ronald is kind of cute when he blushes.  Answer Slight

6) You're damn right I'm mad at you!   Answer High

7) Paul almost moved to Alaska last year.   Answer Slight

8) "Diamond prices are shockingly high this year", said the Queen.  Answer High

9) They should absolutely not criticize us for arriving late, when they arrived late, too.  Answer High

10) I am definitely upset with my real estate agent.   Answer High

11) That skirt hardly fits you.   Answer Slight

12) There are many times that nothing seems to go right.   Answer Moderate

Back to Adverbs                    Back to Exercises