The Abuse of Absolute Adjectives

Ever since I blogged about The 5 Most Annoying Grammar Mistakes people keep mentioning other common errors which bug them. This post is a request from my mother, whose pet peeve is the commonly abused absolute adjective. When a TV presenter describes something as “very unique” she loses it! But as we’ll see, this problem is a simple matter of people not thinking about what they’re saying.

So, absolute adjectives are words such as unique, full, empty, excellent, complete, impossible, dead. Most normal adjectives can be compared and intensified, for example, red, redder, reddest or good, better, best. Adverbs such as very, more, less, most, best, almost, etc. are also used to compare and intensify adjectives, for example  “the sky is very dark tonight”. However, the special and surprising thing about absolute adjectives is that they’re absolute and they cannot be compared or intensified at all because it wouldn’t make any sense. There isn’t a big list of absolute adjectives that you can consult when in doubt (well I’m sure there probably is one somewhere but that’s not the point) because it’s usually logical and obvious whether you can apply very or most to an adjective. The best example of this is dead. You can’t really say something’s very dead or that someone is deader than someone else (unless you’ve been watching too many vampire programs, in which case this probably wasn’t the best example for me to choose). 

However, despite the remarkable amount of words in the English language, people still struggle to express themselves properly, which is where we fall into bad habits. People use the same words again and again, when really they should be consulting a thesaurus more regularly, or just putting more thought into what they really mean. Instead of choosing the word unique, you might think of opting for something else which fits the description better, say extraordinary or marvellous. If we widened our vocabulary a little, we wouldn’t be using all the same words again and again and therefore wouldn’t feel the need to intensify or compare things quite so much. If you keep using the word unique for everything, you start to feel the need to say that the most recent unique thing you’ve found is more or less so than the previous thing. So generally, I would recommend trying to use a greater variety of words to avoid falling into this sort of a trap.

Also, I think we’re quite enthusiastic these days, we just LOVE to say how GREAT or AWFUL everything is! Using one adjective on its own in a sentence without ten adverbs makes things sound boring and bland: “How was the show, dear?” “It was good”… See? Bland. You’re more likely to say, “It was REALLY THE BEST MOST EXCITING THING I’VE EVER SEEN EVER”. That’s more like it.

With these two elements in mind, we get people saying things like “that’s the most impossible challenge  yet” or “his voice is very unique”. It doesn’t really make sense when you think about it, how can something that’s one of a kind be very one of a kind? It’s surely beyond comparison, as there is nothing to compare it to. And similarly if something simply cannot be done, you cannot say that it is less or more cannot-be-done-able. It just doesn’t work, and in comes my mother, shouting at the TV again (“idiots”).

The worst thing about issues like this is that they’re often actively encouraged or left uncorrected by people who should know better. Wikipedia very helpfully states that although grading and comparing absolutes is discouraged in formal writing,

“such words are routinely and frequently qualified in contemporary speech and writing…Internet searches for “more complete” or “most complete” establish the frequency of this usage with millions of examples”

This is a completely pointless thing to say (here’s the link); just because lots of people do it doesn’t make it right! People frequently put your instead of you’re as well, but that doesn’t mean the English language is suddenly going to abandon you’re. I hope not anyway. I think I’m reading too much into this Wikipedia page, but they could have just said it was incorrect and left it at that!

So, on behalf of my mother, I would maybe ask that people in general put a little extra thought into what they really mean. She doesn’t really like shouting at the TV, she just feels a bit strongly about this particular point. There are SOOOOOO many words in the English language, let’s try and use some different ones eh? And for God’s sake, THINK about what you’re saying!

If you’re interested in learning more about this general subject it might be worth checking out comparative adverbs/adjectives and superlatives. They’re awesome.

Does anyone else have a pet peeve? I’d love to hear about it if you do! 🙂