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Understanding Intensifiers in English

Intensifiers enhance the meaning of adjectives, with examples including 'very,' 'really,' and 'extremely.' Strong adjectives, which already convey extremes, do not pair with 'very' but can use other intensifiers like 'absolutely' or 'totally.' Different intensifiers are used with comparative and superlative adjectives, such as 'much' for comparatives and 'easily' for superlatives.

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17 views2 pages

Understanding Intensifiers in English

Intensifiers enhance the meaning of adjectives, with examples including 'very,' 'really,' and 'extremely.' Strong adjectives, which already convey extremes, do not pair with 'very' but can use other intensifiers like 'absolutely' or 'totally.' Different intensifiers are used with comparative and superlative adjectives, such as 'much' for comparatives and 'easily' for superlatives.

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carlos hernandez duran
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Intensifiers

Intensifiers add strength to the meaning of an adjective.

very really extremely amazingly exceptionally enough


incredibly particularly remarkably unusually

For example:

• It’s a really exciting story.


• Everyone is very happy to see you.
• We are extremely sorry.

Note: Enough can be used as an intensifier, but it goes after the adjective it
modifies. For example:

• “Dan is not old enough to vote.”


• “My sister isn’t tall enough to ride the roller coaster”.

With strong adjectives

When we want to indicate that something or someone is exceptional, we can use


strong adjective: enormous, terrible, tiny, excellent, marvelous, brilliant, perfect.

Since these strong adjectives already indicate an extreme ("enormous" = "very


large"), we do not use the intensifier "very". We do not say something is very
enormous or someone is very brilliant.

With strong adjectives, we normally use intensifiers like:

absolutely completely exceptionally particularly quite


totally utterly really
For example:

• Their house is absolutely enormous.


• The film was totally awful.
• The food smelled really disgusting.

Note: some intensifiers go with particular adjectives depending on the meaning of


the adjective. For example, we use the intensifier highly with the adjectives
successful, intelligent, likely and unlikely. We use the intensifier bitterly with the
adjectives disappointed, unhappy and cold.

Comparative adjectives

With comparative adjectives, particular words or phrases are used as intensifiers.

much a lot a great deal a good bit

For example:

• Dave is much faster than me.


• My brother is a lot taller than me.

Superlative adjectives

With superlative adjectives, we use the following:

easily by far

For example:

• Paul is by far the most intelligent person I know.


• Her essay was easily the longest in the class.

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