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In linguistics, an intensifier (abbreviated ) is a lexical category (but not a traditional part of speech) for a modifier that makes no contribution to the meaning of a clause but serves to enhance and give additional emotional context to the lexical item it modifies. Intensifiers are grammatical expletives, specifically expletive attributives (or, equivalently, attributive expletives or attributive-only expletives ; they also qualify as expressive attributives ), because they function as semantically Emptiness filler. Characteristically, English language draws intensifiers from a class of words called degree modifiers , words that quantify the idea they modify. More specifically, they derive from a group of words called adverbs of degree , also known as degree adverbs . When used grammatically as intensifiers, these words cease to be degree , because they no longer quantify the idea they modify; instead, they emphasize it emotionally. By contrast, the words , , and are degree adverbs, but not intensifiers. The other hallmark of prototypical intensifiers is that they are adverbs which lack the primary characteristic of adverbs: the ability to modify verbs. Intensifiers modify exclusively and adverbs, but this rule is insufficient to classify intensifiers, since there exist other words commonly classified as adverbs that never modify verbs but are not intensifiers, e.g. ''.
For these reasons, Huddleston argues that intensifier not be recognized as a primary grammatical or lexical category. Intensifier is a category with grammatical properties, but insufficiently defined unless its functional significance is also described (what Huddleston calls a notional definition).
Technical term, intensifiers roughly qualify a point on the affective semantic property, which is . Syntax, intensifiers pre-modify either adjectives or adverbs. Semantics, they increase the emotional content of an expression. The basic intensifier is very. A versatile word, English permits very to modify adjectives and adverbs, but not verbs. Other intensifiers often express the same intention as very.
Words such as so can occur only as predicative intensifiers, and others, such as -ass, typically are used only as attributive intensifiers:
There is dialectal variation in the "correctness" of certain forms.
A 2013 Forbes article about counterproductive modes of expression in English specifically discouraged use of really and observed that it provokes doubt and degrades the speaker's credibility: "'Really' – Finder calls this a 'poor attempt to instill candor and truthfulness' that makes clients and coworkers question whether you're really telling the truth."
The narrator. It is easy to tell whether a narrator is narrating because the subject matter interests him or because he wants to evoke interest through his narrative. If the latter is the case, he will exaggerate, use superlatives, etc. Then he usually narrates the worse, because he is not thinking so much about the story as about himself. Human, All Too Human, § 343
A quote often attributed to Mark Twain but probably by newspaper editor William Allen White is "Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."
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