Intensifiers in English
EN: I'm doing a research about "Intensifiers". I've done this sequence as a scale from the strongest in the beginning to the weakest in the end, I want opinions from native English-speakers, whether this list can be considered accurate according to actual daily use in the US or the UK (please make the distinction) or it needs to be rearranged or changed in some way. Please, feel free to add more intensifiers not mentioned in the list.
Thanks for the attention. Below comes the list.
ES: Estoy haciendo esta búsqueda sobre "Instensifiers" en Inglés. He heacho una lista en forma de escala, siendo que los más fuertes se ven en el comienzo y los más débiles en el final. Me gustaría recibir opiniones de Anglohablantes nativos acerca de la lista, si ella está correcta or está equivocada, de acuerdo con el uso en Estados Unidos or Reino Unido (favor especificarlo), que puede ser cambiado o reorganizado de alguna manera. Usted puede adicionar cuaquiera "Intesifier" que conozca y no estea mencionado en la lista.
Gracias por la atención. Abajo se ve la lista.
Scale of Intesifiers
Overwhelmingly/ Absolutely /Totally --- Literally --- Definitely --- Entirely /Completely --- Fully Very/ Really --- Truly --- Positively/ Quite --- Somewhat/ Almost --- Nearly --- Just about/ Rather --- Fairly --- Relatively/ Kind of --- Sort of/ Barely --- Scarcely --- Hardly/ Slightly
2 Answers
Your list seems more or less right, but there are other factors in play as well: many of the intensifiers you mention differ not just in intensity but also in register (i.e. formality, or the situation in which you would use them). Use of "literally" as an intensifier is non-standard and controversial. You also need to distinguish between modifiers of verbs and modifiers of adjectives: "I sort of threw the ball" and "I'm sort of tired" are completely different syntactically and can't be compared for intensity. "The fire totally consumed the building" and "I'm totally going to call her" differ not just syntactically but also in register. Finally, I'm not sure what you intend to convey by the difference between (---) vs. (/), but you seem to be grouping things into categories; the basis for those categories is open to question.
Anyway, I don't mean to be discouraging, I just wanted to point out some important considerations! (I'm from the US.)
This is a difficult task. I once tried to do this with words of physical description, ie. Gorgeous, beautiful, etc. I found it impossible as words mean different things to different people.
I would start with levels of approximately the same intensity. Sometimes one word will work and other times you need a different word depending on what you are trying to say.
Level One: Completely/Totally/Absolutely/Entirely/Certainly/Definitely (these indicate, for lack of reusing one of these words, 100%
Level Two: Modify the above list with the word Almost
Level Three: Overwhelmingly, ??
Level Four: Quite/Almost/Maybe/Possible/Somewhat/etc/
Level Five: Nearly/Barely/Seldom/Scarcely, etc.
Level Six: Never/Rarely/etc.
Just my quick attempt. By no means correct or complete.
USA English
To me, for example, overwhelming just means more than 50%. 51% overwhelms the remaining 49%. To others it may be 75% or 90%, who knows. But it is no where near as certain as my level one words.
