Level: intermediate
Intensifiers
We use words like very, really and extremely to make adverbs stronger:
She speaks English very well.
They behaved really foolishly.
He put the glass down extremely carefully.
We call these words intensifiers. Other intensifiers are:
| amazingly | exceptionally | incredibly | remarkably | particularly |
We also use enough to say more about an adverb, but enough comes after its adverb:
She didn't win. She didn't play well enough.
Mitigators
We use words like fairly, rather and quite to make adverbs less strong:
She speaks English fairly well.
They behaved rather foolishly.
The children played quite happily.
We call these words mitigators. Mitigators are the opposite of intensifiers.
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Dear teachers,
I have a question about this subject:
Can we put adverbials & intensifiers & mitigators before Verbs ? as I learned from the last lesson that in order to emphasize the adverb of manner we can put adv in front of main verb. So can we say : "The children rather anxiously waited for their new teacher?" (example in the practice)
And can I answer: "My parents recently moved into a quite new flat" instead of "My parents quite recently moved into a new flat" ?
thank you!
Hi lien.t,
Yes, that sentence is grammatically correct. However, its meaning is different from the original sentence.
Note that in these sentences, "quite" describes an adjective (sentence 1) and an adverb (sentence 2), rather than a verb.
Does that make sense?
Jonathan
LearnEnglish team
Hello teacher, thank you so much.