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 with "very healthy" being a synonym for exuberant. Exuberant is full of energy, not feeling healthy. again linked but not the same.
All of you who want to sound either more "well read", or more native, this website will lead you astray.
All of you who are non-native, this website will confuse you and make you question your understanding. listen to bbc radio4/read the financial times, it will be better for you and there is wide range of styles to choose from (in the case of the BBC its free too)
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"). "Very" adds emphasis in a clear and understandable way. in other words, it can make thing very readable, without very much effort. (yes I am taking the piss.)
> 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.
> That being said ‘the more words you know, the more things you can say’ as my old English teacher used to say.
Sure, you can say more things. That's great, if your goal is to talk a lot without caring if anyone else around you is listening to what you're saying.
Language should be task-appropriate. I teach computational aesthetics which would be impossible with the same bucket of words I use to go shopping for apples.
you're right of course. I should have been more clear.
building vocab is _awesome_ everyone who can, should do it. but learning when to use those fancy new words is _more_ important. Getting good source material is key to that.
> 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.
You can swap "very minimum" for "minimum". The "very minimum" means "the extreme minimum" or the "true minimum". Well, a minimum is already an extreme; and absent reasons for believing otherwise, it's reasonable to assume that a speaker wants you to believe she is truthful.
You can use "very" simply for emphasis, rather like "literally" is often used; "I did my very best". If it's really being used just for emphasis, then you can delete the word "very", and simply set the following word in bold or somethiing.
Words get more precise as they get more exotic, and that is not always what you want. I saw it too much in college--students whipping a thesaurus to make their papers seem 'smarter' but in reality making them incoherent.
I agree, "very" is ok, but it is a crutch. In many of these cases, just dropping the 'very' would be better than picking a new word.
I think the best way to sound well read is to just read more. It's very easy to spot when someone doesn't quite know the connotations of the words they use[1]. It's also hard to pick up those connotations without being exposed to the words in their natural "habitat".
While I wouldn't use it like this in day to day speech, in rhetorical speech the use of "very" repeatedly can be used to emphasise a point.
Someone warning against dangerous driving might say "a car at speed can be dangerous because it's very heavy, it's going very fast and so it's very likely to kill or give life changing injuries to somebody if it collides with them."
I think it has a better effect when spoken than when written, though.
Also, a great vocabulary is actually a disadvantage for non-native speakers if your pronunciation is not there yet, it's more likely to confuse than impress.
The point is that when you use "very", you reveal that you have not attained that level of intellect which realizes that "very" is extraneous almost every time. This insight usually comes with a large amount of time invested in reading challenging books. It has little to do with expansive vocabulary, and more to do with understanding word choice and avoiding pretension.
We pick "very" when we have not trained ourselves to be conscious of word choice. When we become conscious of it, we stop saying "very" quite naturally.
And we start using annoying words like "quite".
For anyone trying to sound like they have a better grasp of English, definitely lose the "very".
Here's an example: which is better? "gregarious" or "very outgoing"?
(It's a trick question - they're both bad... the correct answer is "outgoing")
If you want to sound actually smart, remove words like "very", and don't change "outgoing" to "gregarious". The only people who use "gregarious" in a normal conversation are people who are trying to sound smart. A smart person is conscious of how to avoid using pretentious words in normal conversation. Smart people usually don't _need_ to demonstrate that they are smart.
To sound intelligent, simply use the tone of your voice to indicate that you could say "very", but instead you just say "outgoing" - perhaps with some inflection or cadence variation. Smart people notice when someone omits words like "very", because they have been faced with the same issue.
whoooooosh is the sound of a joke flying overhead.
> Smart people notice when someone omits words like "very", because they struggle with the same issue.
Snobs notice. You are confusing snobbery with intelligence.
there is nothing wrong with very, some people obviously are very passionate about it's use. However to imply its as detrimental to conveyed intellect as a malapropism is frankly bollocks[1]. Keep using very, it'll make you happy.
[1]imply it makes you sound stupid, like you've got a word wrong, for my ESL friends
Smart people simply don't waste their time with such trite considerations such as this. Smart / Successful people achieve success on an international stage, and rub shoulders with a large amount of non-native English speaking people who are absolutely brilliant, but might not have the vocabulary of a native speaker. As such they try to limit to speech to be as simple and clear as possible.
"very" is a comparing/contrasting word. "Outgoing" is not a replacement for "very outgoing" any more than "tall" is a replacement for "more tall than usual". And yes, I modulated the tone of my voice there.
adding very doesn't make it subjective. the whole sentence is subjective. the very is a modifier that indicates the person saying thinks its really quite bad. Don't hate on adverbs.
Correct, it is subjective. But removing the "very" makes it _sound_ objective. It's more of a declaration than an "I think". And isn't this all about how something comes across, how it sounds, how it affects someone else?
Try it out, my advice is sound!
(...vs, Try it out, my advice is very sound!)
This topic reminds me of how exclamation marks are used, and how inclusion or omission changes the flavor of written sentences that contain the same words.
For example, "Try it out, my advice is sound." tastes different than "Try it out, my advice is sound!". The "very" betrays lack of conviction - the speaker is still trying to convince.
If you're an ESL speaker or something thinking this will be useful, I'd suggest caution (heh, changed that from 'very wary').
Many of the proposed alternatives I saw clicking through 'random' have a subtlety or specificity that the original 'very adj' doesn't - so it sounds like you mean something you might not (probably don't) if you say 'colossal' instead of 'tall' or 'emaciated' instead of 'skinny' for example.
And 'pungent' instead of 'tasty' is just plain wrong.
Just to give my experience, I actually didn't know what that acronym meant. I tried googling it but "ESL speaker" only gave results about loudspeakers and just "ESL" was mostly about some German Company.
I even thought it had to do with sign language at first but didn't get the meaning of the sentence in that case!
---
A little off-topic but that makes me think of another HN thread some months ago talking about acronyms like "SRE" or "SWE" (and some others I since forgot), that many HNers assumed to be understood by everyone.
Many non-american/english developers actually never encountered those (including I, I've been software engineer since at least 8 years and never saw those terms beside HN, like I would think most in my country) and it led to the same kind of incomprehension.
I tried googling all three + "abbreviation" so for example "SRE abbreviation" and the first result for all three was the actual term for the abbreviation.
I thought so (as an english-as-first-language), but I've met a bunch of people around the world who didn't know what ESL meant. I get the feeling the phrase is most known in American.
Well, my first wife was a schoolteacher, and my daughter is a schoolteacher. My second wife was a careers adviser. My son taught English as a second language for a while. So perhaps it's "trade jargon" that I have integrated.
You're very right (Or "You're perfect", as this is suggesting!)
I clicked through a few random ones. For "very ill" it gave "lifeless" and for "very frustrated" it gave "infuriating", both of which probably aren't what you mean!
"So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women - and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. It also won’t do in your essays." -- The Dead Poets Society
Great movie but not the best advice - "morose" doesn't even mean "very sad", it means ill-tempered/in a bad mood. I wouldn't even say there is one good word that means "very sad", but "morose" is definitely not it. The site in question came up with "inconsolable", but that's hardly appropriate if you're talking about "very sad news" (after a few attempts it come back with "somber" which at least sort of works in that case, though I'd still struggle to imagine myself telling a friend that their divorce was "sombre news").
I think that's the point -- "very sad" is unpoetical because it doesn't convey anything more than "sad", which is itself a generic word. If you're writing poetry or fiction you want to be describing emotional states more interesting than "sad".
The important corollary here is that not all language needs to be poetical. It's OK to use generic language in a lot of situations. Sometimes "I'm very sorry to hear that ____" is the tool for the social situation.
I mean, the goal wasn't to sound "authentic", it was to avoid sounding "lazy" while trying to "woo women", which is the only situation considered relevant in the supposedly-inspiring speech by the maybe-a-bit-creepy professor.
Not meant to school or lecture anyone, but ‘morose’ stems from the Latin ‘mora’, meaning ‘delay', something slow. Examples from Latin.: _mora solvendi_ (delay in paying), _compensatio morae_ (compensation for the delay).
I believe that the original meaning is lost [or warped at least] when it becomes synonymous with bleak, cheerless, chill, Cimmerian, cloudy, cold, depressing...
But since it means ‘slow’ it also relates to blue, dejected, depressed, despondent, down, droopy, hangdog, inconsolable, low, melancholic[0].
And "telephone" comes from roots meaning "sound at a distance" or "far away sound". That doesn't make it right to say you heard the "telephone of laughter" when you meant to say the "distant sound of laughter" .
Sometimes you're deliberately trying to be inoffensive and formal, in which case claiming you're morose makes you look like a clown.
Compare "I was sad to hear about your grandmother" or "I was very sad..." with "I was morose..." or "I was inconsolable..." When it really matters, you need to drop the pretensions from your writing and just be normal.
Heartbroken is a particular type of sadness though, and again, doesn't apply to non-living occurrences (like "news" or "excuses" or "movies"). You'd probably have to use "pathetic" for "excuse", but a "pathetic movie" means something quite different...
I think it was Mencken that most popularly called this sort of thing sophomoric, and chastised "schoolma'ams" trying to impart conscious thought and logic into the unthinking that don't much care for what it is they're doing (e.g. writing, composing music, etc.).
I think using "very lazy" is quite fine. If you're not just simply lazy, but much more so -- yet fall short of *exceptionally* lazy: you are very lazy.
The same with very tired. If I'm exhausted, I will simply use exhausted. But if I don't feel exhausted, but simply very tired, then I feel I would be acting "puerile"[0] in trying to exaggerate my emotions to be something more than they really are. If I am exhausted, then I feel that I urgently need rest immediately; and if I'm tired, then perhaps I could do with some rest, but it can always wait; but then if I'm very tired, perhaps it means I'm somewhere between urgently needing rest and within my ability to put off rest? Some sort of in-between state? But how can that be: needing now or not needing rest now is binary -- there isn't any notable in-between there, like the cliche of "you're either pregnant or not" (but perhaps that too breaks down depending on our exactness of the definition of "pregnant." Is pregnancy determined as the exact moment the egg is fertilized or only when a woman's urine, a short time later, contains an elevated level of hCG?). In that case, then we could do away with "very tired." And if for some normal reason another person were to have different personal definitions for what they feel is their "tired" and "exhausted," then this would be reopened again, and we'd have to start again into another discussion.
I cannot find a fitting end to this carb-fueled rant. I've become self-conscious of all of the "technique" English teachers beat into me, and I really don't like it, and don't want to keep on writing. Run-on sentences: "cannot ever ever use those." Transition words: "they must be used liberally." Punctuation: "there is an agreed upon set of rules on how and when they should and shan't be used." Passive vs. active voice, prepositional placement, cliches, etc. "If you don't follow these rules and techniques, then you are simply a fool! We will learn you write good! Mark Twain's stylistic choices be damned."
I find I cannot enjoy writing, when the spectres of pedagogues long past haunt me at every sentence; and I am spending more and more time having to unlearn what was taught to me in school.
It's also important to note that this type of substitution is very context-dependent. A very tired person may be exhausted, but a very tired joke is definitely not.
Since we're being pedantic, I'd point out that pulchritudinous is only used for people of great physical beauty, it's not a generic replacement for beautiful.
This also seems to reflect the debate on agglutinative vs. isolating languages, or at least languages with more words vs. less words. One style is great for creative prose and philosophy, the other is practical for real world communication with those with varying skill levels.
See Lojban for a very practical and clear language, which only allows you to create words packed with too much meaning when you are constructing metaphors using rafsi forms.
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.
If you follow this advice, you end up with a mess of incoherent verbiage that (probably) says something very different to what was intended.
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.
Adding a degree to uniqueness would describe the delta between it and its nearest relative. Hence, "very unique" would mean something closer to exceptional or "off-the-charts" and is a perfectly reasonable construction. I get the impression the anti-very crowd haven't actually thought too deeply on the matter
How about something which is being assessed on multiple dimensions?
A tee-shirt which is a distinct colour is unique.
A tee-shirt which is a distinct colour, distinct fit, distinct size and has a distinct motif could perhaps be described as being 'very unique'.
When you write something, what it is that you are doing, to put it very (clearly excessively) plainly, is selecting words that convey some meaning in some way that pleases you, the writer. Choose your words. You can try to choose words to please others if you like, but there's not much reason to expect success from such a strategy. Choose your words. Find your audience.
This might be a useful way to discover words for some writers. It's unfortunate that it also supports and validates the meme of this sort of very simplistic, trivial, easily parroted, stick-in-head, catchphrase-based writing advice meme.
The only way to write some sentences correctly is to use the word "only". And sometimes that that can't be removed, without changing the meaning. Or that's just the way you like it and that's that. It's like how premature optimisation is the root of all evil so you should never consider performance before the beta. Like adverbs, and starting sentences with a conjunction, or the inscrutable semicolon literal emdash all of these writing advice memes are very, very flawed.
Proponents of such things might claim that "obviously" you're (only) meant to apply such an intensely absolute rule where appropriate. Take chillpills, grandparent. I just hope that it's quite invisible that I find this somewhat hilarious, but also quite miserable.
I think that is actually the motivation to avoid very. It's completely true, and important to note that "very clean" =/= "sparkling". "Very" simply intensifies the word "clean". "Sparkling" doesn't simply mean intensely clean. Instead it means (in context) that it is so clean that light reflects off the surface. It has a richer meaning.
On the other hand the way the tool presents is not the most helpful. A list would be much better. Perhaps I am trying to say that I have cleaned my carpet well. I would perhaps want "spotless" or "immaculate" rather than "very clean". But I certainly wouldn't want "sparkling." That suggestion is worthless for me, and I wouldn't want to have to keep clicking to find a relevant one. (Also, what if I meant "clean" as in "clean language". I don't think any of these suggestions would be relevant).
So not my favorite tool (a thesaurus is much better), but a novel way of presenting the idea.
An issue I have with this approach is the lack of gradation.
A very clean carpet might still not be spotless nor immaculate. You'd have to adjust and go for "almost spotless", but then is it still better than using "very" ?
Forcing people to think long and hard about the exact word they want to use is beneficial, but I'd expect we'd still fall back to modulators like "very" in most cases (the same way I'm cushioning this statement to avoid going to an extreme)
> Forcing people to think long and hard about the exact word they want to use is beneficial
...except in the cases where it's not. If you want to communicate efficiently, you need to speak plainly: you will be understood and the whole process will go smoothly as you won't need to lose time to replace each 'very' in your sentence with something that might or might not fit.
I wish this site would just list all the matches. If you keep clicking the button, it'll cycle (randomly!) through other substitutions.
Sparkling was also immaculate. "Demanding" was also arduous, grueling, backbreaking, and formidable.
Surely one of those would work for replacing "very hard" in a sentence? If not, then use your own imagination. "Complicated", "tedious", "rock hard", etc.
Sometimes you have no choice but to throw a "very" in there. But if you're the type to lean on that word, then it's worthwhile to explore alternatives to avoid boring writing.
I mostly disagree with your inequalities. Sure, in a literal sense, they are not equivalencies, but I think often they'd be a fine substitute. It doesn't really matter that the "very old" 200-year-old house" isn't literally "ancient". It doesn't really matter that the kitchen counter you just intensely scrubbed doesn't literally reflect light in a sparkly, flashy way. Exaggeration and hyperbole are valid rhetorical devices, and, given context, the listener or reader will understand what is meant.
Sure, "bleak" doesn't work for "very dark" when you're talking about a literal lack of light, but it would probably work when describing a certain type of film, or an awful situation. I don't think the site is trying to say "every time you want to use 'very dark', use 'bleak' instead"; it's just trying to give you alternatives that might -- but might not -- fit the usage you're looking for.
Beyond that, I do agree with the overall motive here: "very" is often a lazy intensifier, when we could be much more expressive in our speech or (especially) writing. For all its faults, the English language does offer decent breadth when it comes to synonyms of various intensity.
I've seen such advice in many writing forums (other examples include don't use adverbs, don't use passive voice, etc.), and while it certainly pays to heed your choice of vocabulary, I'm not convinced that simply avoiding a fixed set of words or forms is good advice. Let alone replacing them with a fixed set of substitutes.
Open a few good books and essays, and see if there are adverbs, "very", passive voices, or other bad forms. These are reputable works written by careful and capable writers, and enjoyed by many readers. If they are all deemed wrong in the eyes of such advice, it's the advice that's wrong.
The valuable lesson is to actively think about the words you use, whether the text accurately convey what you mean, in the tone you desire, and is readable by your intended audience.
I'd say a good pair of thesaurus and dictionary is much better than this website. At least you got multiple candidates, an explanation of each, and get to choose the most appropriate one.
I feel like a lot of people here are taking the point of this site much too literally.
It's not saying "never ever ever ever use 'very'" or "if you want to use 'very', these are always the words you should use, no matter the context".
It's a gentle nudge to remind us that often "very" is something that we reach for because we are too lazy to come up with a more expressive word. The words the site comes up with won't be appropriate for every context where you'd otherwise just prefix a "very". That's fine. It's a starting point, not the end-all be-all. And sometimes a "very" ends up being the way to go. That's also fine.
Hacker News people being overly literal? Can't be.
Jesting aside, yes, I would echo this and a couple other comments: the point is to nudge yourself to think a bit more about diction, and spotting the word "very" is an easy trigger to do that.
Most replacements for very + something will be more precise, more evocative and just sound better. Of course, while more precise, they may be more inaccurate. You trade the shotgun of "very" for a sniper rifle, and that requires more careful aim.
(Of course) you can (always) (just) remove words from a sentence. The (very) idea that doing so will (always) result in a "better" sentence is nonsensical.
The Empire State Building is a very tall building, but it is not the tallest. King Kong is a tall gorilla, and he is the tallest. Many examples are contrived. This example is contrived. I'm sorry, but I'm not very sorry.
I don't appreciate this personal attack. You know nothing about me, you know nothing about who and what I endorse. You simply conclude that because I refer to work by a person you dislike, I am also a person you dislike, and therefore I'm worthy of being yelled at. The world isn't this black and white.
My linking to an article from 2007 does not mean I stand behind everything its author ever said. It's a good article. It does not suddenly become a bad article just because the author has gone batshit crazy a decade later.
I'll give William Allen White this - of the available text on [1], I could only find one use of "very"[2] as an emphasiser which makes him somewhat of an outlier in the prescriptivist world (following his own advice.)
Quotes don't need the potential author cited. Your advice works whoever told it, especially if you actually stand behind it and we'll take it as your word then.
Famous people say a lot of things and any random advice coming from an authoritative figure is not guaranted to be insightful. On top of that quotes are massively taken out of context and misattributed (this one probably is)
That to me makes the whole quoting one liners format useless if the quote doesn't stand on its own(except when it's used ironically?)
This is good advice with one exception: if you write plain English for non-native speakers.
I use "very" a lot, because it's a well-understood modifier. "very bad" is cleared than "appalling". It will be understood by all without needing a large vocabulary.
An alternative is to use the "plus-" and "doubleplus-" prefixes.
When I open the page, it says "very + loading... = loading...", for a few moments because of course you need at least a second to load two more words from the server.
Always great to see how useless the internet can be when we try really hard.
While it’s fine that the annoying student who always corrected your grammar in school has enough extra cash to host this site, it’s a shame they still haven’t applied themselves to anything useful or interesting.
Something that HAS been very helpful to me (very surprisingly to me, who was very skeptical)… outlook’s “make it more concise” hints. Makes my emails waaay more concise and direct… I hate coming across as cocky or confident but they hit the nail on the head for me. Very helpful.
It's just wrong. "Very" + "outstanding" is not the same as "distinguished". "Very" + "entertaining" is not the same as "absorbing". I've only tried it a few times, but not once has it come up with a proposal that is correct.
"You mean we're all being sent to a gulag tomorrow? We'll be traversing a vast nothingness for months on end starting tomorrow? We'll be witnessing horrific environmental catastrophes that nobody knows about because they're too far from civilisation tomorrow?"
"No. Sheesh, I just meant it's going to be very cold tomorrow!"
Yes - the site (naturally) lacks context and the "translations" lack subtlety.
But their the main point stands strongly ... take the time and devote the thought to choosing the correct word, and you'll produce better prose. Your text will be compact, precise, and more readable.
This is missing an important factor for writing: context. There are many places where it's fine to wax lyrical and reach for the thesaurus. But if you're trying to write clearly and concisely then there is something to be said for simplicity.
Eg. many in the tech world are not native English speakers, and this surely translates to most content to be published on the web.
While I do appreciate learning a lot more of the literary English vocabulary, I prefer to do that through well known works of fiction, and only seldomly through texts I read for my work (eg. API documentation).
I tried out "very tired" and got "exhausted", "spent" and "flagging".
Obligatory caveat: I'm a second-language English speaker but I've been fluent for some twenty years and read and write English on a daily basis.
I expected it to suggest "exhausted" but that just feels like a synonym (interestingly, "very exhausted" has no available suggestion). It also implies prior physical or mental effort, whereas "very tired" could also be the result of bad or insufficient sleep. Synonyms are rarely equivalent and this one just seems to suggest context that may be inappropriate.
"Spent" seems like a more obvious example of this problem, putting the emphasis on depletion of energy rather than not having recovered in the first place. I'd also say it's less approachable as it's a colloquial metaphor. I know I had to do a double take when I came across this use as a learner. Either way, it's no more elegant than "very tired".
"Flagging" throws me for a loop. I have no intutive sense what that word is even intended to mean in this context. The dictionary merely suggests it's a synonym for "exhausted" but provides no etymological information or context. I would guess it's metaphorical (in the sense of "giving up" by waving a flag of surrender, or signaling for help as if waving a flag) but I wouldn't have guessed the meaning from reading it without context. Especially as I've only ever seen it used as a transitive word, meaning to mark something for review or special treatment.
Sure, avoid "very" if you want to write literature. But if you're writing for clarity rather than art, please stick to "very" if it avoids digging through a thesaurus just for the sake of it.
"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.
While I think this advise of yours should be clear to any user of a thesaurus or this site, I figured I'd share my default answer to a replacement for "very hard".
"very hard" -> "difficult"
Which is interesting because that's also an opinionated synonym for "hard", which without context has many definitions and interpretations. I'm also not even sure I think of "difficult" as being more hard than hard. I digress. Have a good evening.
I am not yet "very old" (still not 40 :), but I've been called that by much younger folk, and I even joke about being "very old" in different social settings.
It's obviously a relative term, so I would hope this isn't considered "rude" more generally.
Even objectively, if life expectancy is 75 in a region, saying that someone 70+ is "old", or someone 85+ is "very old" sounds "correct" rather than rude. Is "very young" rude as well?
Is it rude to say that someone is very short or very tall? I mean, that 6ft basketball player is very short.
Yes, some will take offence at any objective statement of fact, and some of these are cultural (tall is good, short is not; young is good, short is not), but if your point is not to denigrate, then you are not rude imho.
On one hand, I think this kind of service can help people expand their vocabularies.
On the other hand, there's a downside risk of replacing unimaginative writing with confused writing. "very + fragile -> feeble" is absolutely not a reliable translation[1]. The suggestions furnished by this service seem to generally 'work' in the sense that their possible meanings include "very + (category)," but without context you explode the set of messages you might communicate. Something that is fragile breaks easily. Something that is very fragile more so. Something that is feeble is lacking strength in general, it may give out at any time, it connotes a sense of being underweight, etc. All concepts that "very fragile" may be hoping to avoid invoking (however clumsily).
Switching words switches meanings.
[1] One might argue that 'fragile' does not need assistance at all in this case.
Regarding your [1], I think people reach for "very" for two different reasons: because they habitually "overseason" their sentences, adding intensifiers when the underlying language is already intense, or because they "underseason" them with limp adjectives that they're trying to pump up. The former people just need to build their confidence to drop "very". The latter need something like this site to help learn better adjectives.
I think my point is that these adjectives are not "better" - they are different. They mean different things, which you might also mean, but aren't good "drop in" replacements.
(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 passive voice). Good writing means thinking about your words, your sentence structure, etc., yes - but not arbitrarily throwing out half of the language because of some weird dogmas.
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!
Yeah, I was also taught the silly rule in school that you shouldn't say "said" all the time. I don't know where it comes from, but texts that use this rule extensively just read like what a schoolkid would write, not an actual author.
The point of careful and nuanced words is that you should use them where it matters. In many cases, especially in prose, it doesn't and "said" is more than enough.
(oh and also, despite its flowery language at times, Homeric language is full of repetitive turns of phrases too)
> despite its flowery language at times, Homeric language is full of repetitive turns of phrases too
Absolutely, as I understand it that's believed to be a direct result of it being passed down orally, a technique for memorisation.
I just meant that the dialogue is generally colourfully exclaimed, never merely 'said'; though plenty of those individual words even (for describing how it's.. said) are repeated endlessly.
Though, I've only read one English translation, so I did hesitate to draw the comparison. I assume no respectable translator would start 'flowering up' a text like that if it did hypothetically say the equivalent of 'said' all the time though.
Outside 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.
One reason is because "very + <adjective>" often only vaguely approximates what the writer means. "Very good" has such a wide range of interpretations that it almost has no meaning. If I tell you I went to a "very good" restaurant, then how was my experience? Was it above average? A step beyond merely acceptable? Best restaurant ever?
Alternatively, saying that "I went to a marvelous restaurant" better indicates that my experience was exceptional.
Very works but it's missing out on an opportunity to give more detail.
Most of the adjectives in this app have multiple alternatives, one of which is likely closer to what you're trying to represent.
Or to put it another way: concepts like "smartness" are complicated and multidimensional. Someone who is "very smart" could be: good at their job, naturally intelligent, built up knowledge though experience and hard work, street-smart, smarter than average, smartest person in the world ever etc.
I wouldn't say there's always a better single word alternative to "very adjective" but it's worth thinking about when writing (and probably not worth thinking about in everyday speech!).
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.
I have seen almost this phenomenon: Some people are able to reduce a very complex problem and its solution down to something so simple that upon hearing it, everyone is immediately convinced of its truth. In fact, it is so self-evident and cannot be seen any other way, that you do not even feel the need to write it down. It may even be dismissed by some as being too trivial an observation to be of much help.
...And then, just a few days later, you find yourself staring at this very problem and all its immense complexity starts looking menacingly at you. Solutions? Ha! how could one possibly even hope to solve such a problem! Except, you recall that someone did. And yet, for the life of you, you wish you could remember what that solution was. Only then can you appreciate its elegance and the genius required to produce it.
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.
Accuracy and precision is sometimes vital, but modifying words with very is frequently a good way of achieving that.
"I want a fast game", "I want a very fast game". This site suggests "rapid", "breakneck", and "dashing" as alternatives for "very fast". "Very fast" is pretty clear very precise compared to those words. Maybe I could speak about "a breakneck pace" instead, but would I have really gained anything other than showing off my vocabulary?
Speaking of very precise, it doesn't even have a suggestion for an alternative to that - though admittedly if I wasn't forcing things I would have phrased that sentence as "more precise than those words".
What does "very fast" actually convey that "fast" doesn't, unless you have a specific example of "fast" to compare with?
The idea isn't that "rapid" means "very fast" (I don't think it even necessarily means faster than "fast"). It's that people will use "very fast" when they feel that "fast" lacks the punch the sentence needs, even when they don't actually mean anything different from "fast".
You're narrowing the range of things that you're describing to not include "normal fast". This can be useful for a variety of reasons. You might be instructing people to skate extra fast this game, while avoiding implying that they usually don't meet the criteria of the word fast. You might be acknowledging that coup is a fast board game, but saying you only have time for an unusually short round of coup (even for coup) before you need to leave.
To quote the person I initially responded to
> However, if there is an opportunity to be more exact, one should take it without remorse.
That is what "very fast" commonly does over "fast". It costs next to nothing, and it specifies the meaning slightly more precisely.
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I don't think "rapid" is really a convincing alternative to "very fast" in any case where the "very" is warranted. I liked the "breakneck" suggestion by the site a bit more, but in most contexts I don't think that it's better, just different.
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.
I agree completely. Just don't take someones plainly worded communication with less value, only because it's plainly worded.
Of course, this all falls completely apart with groups containing a significant number of members with <language> as a second language, where plain speech is required.
When emphasising language becomes habitual, it's intended impact may actually be lessened, by way of the "boy crying wolf" effect. That is, if everything is described as "very" and "really" and "actually", then those emphasisers no longer stand out. We start to ignore them, and the collective energy spent writing them is somewhat wasted.
So I say: let a standalone word suffice, whenever possible. Save emphasis for appropriate moments.
It playfully encourages people to think and write more lyrically. Perhaps the mathematical notation, also apparently intended to be metaphorical, implies a literal variable substitution objective where there is none.
Obviously, words have nuance of meaning dependent on multiple factors.
The point, it seems to me, is just to try to write more creatively, even in work and business.
Poetry can fill even the tiniest spaces. There is always a little room for it.
I believe the site would be great, if below the suggested word it showed you some of the nuance of the suggested substitution. Almost every substitution will change the meaning or connotation, which is arguably the paramount reason for switching from the "very adjective" version. Reminding us of this would elevate the site and would make it more honest.
The website's design is great and simple with no explanation needed of how to use it. Would be snappier if it matched on words automatically so I wouldn't need to press enter.
I noticed with my own writing the use of lazy structures, such as too many adverbs, very, "statement, but concession" sentences, or parenthesis for tangents.
It isn't that these things are always bad. It was only when reading my older works I realized how much I was over-using these that it made my writing as a whole worse. My way of thinking about things, imagery for scenes, everything was getting impacted by the constant use of those sentence structures. Your thoughts can't help but be impacted if you're upping the "impact" of each emotion, phrase, description to be "very" or "lovely purple".
Its OK for descriptions to stand on their own, and the same is true for simple words. A blue coat, the sad man, the lone frog in a pond in the rain.
Write different; you'll be surprised how much you think different, too.
As others have pointed out the fancier word is not always a drop in for the “very x”.
But that isn’t how to use these tools. These tools are great for _reminding you that these other words exist._ I bet most of our writing is riddled with lazy idioms because we’re doing the hard work of turning thoughts into words. That’s hard enough without raising the bar even higher.
Once the first pass is written down however it’s valuable to do a quick skim to see “is there anything I can do to make this more readable? To make it so that my idea gets implanted in the readers brain?”
If you write a paragraph and say very three—or even two— times, a tool that can quickly give you alternatives will make your writing more readable.
I feel like this is is high school lit level advice. I've heard that in the US, part of the grade on essays is calculated algorithmically, based on the rarity of words one uses.
My teachers also tried to get me to avoid word repetition in my writing, such as the word 'very' 'say' etc. but never explained to me why it is a bad thing.
My personal theory is the usage synonyms is important to make sentences look 'dissimilar' as possible. This aids in reading comprehension, as samey looking sentences can lead the readers to lose track of their progress, similarly how one can lose their way physically without the aid of distinctive landmarks.
Don’t lose the «very» in your daily speak. Language should first and foremost be accessible to others, not exquisite. Unless you’re writing a novel, and unless the accuracy of the more elegant substitute word you’d use really matters.
Like many people, I tend to use "very" a lot. But there's often no need to find the appropriate superlative: the best cure is simply to delete it. It makes the sentence stronger by making the reader do half the work.
I think generally it's a good idea to avoid excessive adverbs and adjectives, but sometimes I consciously choose to use not even just 'very', but 'very, very', in cases where the simplicity of language and the excessive repetition feels appropriate to the situation. Usually in very informal online speech.
'Very' serves an important purpose, but it's most effective at it when you restrict it to situations where you absolutely need it.
There's a lot more words than "very" which are popular verbal ticks in the modern world. "Really" is another one. But instead of worrying about one that a rando on the internet made a site about; record yourself speaking and watch yourself back consciously. Learn to be an editor for yourself.
For most people, there's more important ways they could improve their written and spoken communication than worrying about extraneous words.
I think there's a lot you can criticize about this site. The suggestions are often questionable, and there's quite a few very common adjectives for which there are no suggestions at all ("delicious" for example yields "not yet added"). That said, the value of this site imho is it's simplicity, and that it focuses you to think about your use of the word "very", and how you can express ideas better.
My critical sidebar: a thesaurus-like app featured on product hunt? How about featuring a full thesaurus? The UI is nice~
For other grammar and alternative nits, I recommend https://hemingwayapp.com/ . Ex: helps remove words like “just” and suggests better active tone English writing.
I’d say combining the two apps would yield a really strong writing assistant.
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).
There are definitely words for which "very" is unnecessary and an alternate would be better, but in other cases the intensifier is actually the right choice.
And if you do want to reduce your usage of "very", at least check a dictionary before you trust the site's output.
I agree with a lot of the other comments regarding the accuracy of the substitutions suggested here. Having said that, I do think 'very' is overused in daily conversational English. I've found myself replacing it with 'quite' more often now, just for personal taste.
I find https://www.wordhippo.com/ a much superior vocabulary discovery tool. It has myriad (very many) recommendations for "very late" whereas losetheevery.com has none.
The underlying writing issue here is that people will use "very" because the sentence feels too bare and simple without it, so they add "very" (or "really", "extremely", "truly", etc.) as a way to add interest and emphasis. A good example of this is that they have "incomparable" for "very unique". "Unique" and "incomparable" are synonymous, and "very" isn't necessary here at all, but the latter word may have more punch.
You may be right, but even as a non-native speaker I know to use very for emphasis only.
The problem here is, as you can see from the fact that 100% of this thread is pointing out how badly that website works, it completely misses the mark on what it promises to do.
If I wanted synonyms I would search for synonyms, if I wanted to emphasize something then I may want to use this website. Except it's just another synonyms website.
Definition of treacherous: guilty of or involving betrayal or deception.
Of course things can be dangerous and even very dangerous without betrayal or deception. Climbing Mount Everest is very dangerous. But is it treacherous?
You could certainly say "The path along the ridge was treacherous." But this suggests that any footstep might betray you.
But there are many other words that could replace "very dangerous" in certain contexts: perilous, deadly, precarious, etc. Each has specific connotations, or only makes sense in specific contexts.
Can it be worth replacing "very X" with a more specific word? Perhaps. Mere mechanical search and replace won't work. As Mark Twain wrote:
> The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. 'tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.
"Very" is a safe choice, and perfectly fine in many sorts of quick, casual writing. Trying to find the perfect word can occasionally be treacherous[1] for non-native speakers. They might choose a word with a unexpected meaning.
[1] OK, I did that deliberately. I'm very sorry, but not actually repentant.
This web site is strange. English is notable for having a ton of verbs. If you listen to a native speaker with a rich vocabulary, you will not hear a lot of rare adjectives, you will hear stronger verbs.
In elementary school, I was exhorted to avoid "flabby words" when possible. i.e. words that lengthen without adding meaning. "Very" is often such a word, but not always.
It's a funny joke and gets your mind going, but in the field, "very" doesn't get used that much to warrant wholesale replacing. It's not very prevalent, actually
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.
>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.
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
"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".
The English language has 100,000+ words. Most native speakers know less than 10% of them. You'll probably be less, not more, easily understood, if every time your instinct is to use "very", you replace it with a hyper-specific adjective or adverb. In most cases, all you'll achieve is snobbery.
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 with "very healthy" being a synonym for exuberant. Exuberant is full of energy, not feeling healthy. again linked but not the same.
All of you who want to sound either more "well read", or more native, this website will lead you astray.
All of you who are non-native, this website will confuse you and make you question your understanding. listen to bbc radio4/read the financial times, it will be better for you and there is wide range of styles to choose from (in the case of the BBC its free too)
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"). "Very" adds emphasis in a clear and understandable way. in other words, it can make thing very readable, without very much effort. (yes I am taking the piss.)
[1] apart from a few circumstances