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One Liner Wednesday – Stop It.

Maggie

I am guilty. There are words I overuse. This little thing caught my eye on Twitter, posted by Word of the Day App.

Stop saying “Very”

It was accompanied by this graphic as a way to help curb our bad habits.

Graphic showing words to use as an alternative to the word ‘very’
Graphics courtesy of Word of the Day app as seen on Twitter.

Now I am thinking about the best word to use to tell you I am very frustrated. Drop your alternative suggestions in the comments.

One Liner Wednesday is brought to us each week by Linda Hill. Pop over to her place to get the rules and read the contribution of others.

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34 thoughts on “One Liner Wednesday – Stop It.”

  1. I confess that I often do this. I also use the word ‘Actually’ to excess, but I refuse to apologise for doing that! 🙂
    Best wishes, Pete.

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    1. Now I wonder if Iam being lazy. I don’t feel like frustrated describes how I feel. That ‘very’ brings it home. I never noticed you overusing ‘actually’. Interesting.

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  3. I never thought about using very, but now I will. I don’t know why people say ‘like’ so much. It’s irritating. For frustrated, how about Grrrrr! haha. not really, but that’s what I say to myself when it happens. 🙂

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  4. I only notice ‘very’ when it’s misused like in ‘very unique’ or ‘very alone’ – I’d be OK with ‘very lonely.’

    Very frustrated or ‘exasperated’ is something I remember from one particular employee of mine about 20 years ago. I think I knew every synonym there is. Then I started looking for euphemisms for ‘fired.’

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  6. The simple word “that” is often superfluous as well. I had an editor many years ago who said at least of the thats could be eliminated without changing the meaning of anything in the sentence. So I automatically do a that-check!

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  8. I’ve read about not using, very, in writing, but I don’t think it’s a big deal to use in normal conversation or conversational writing. That’s how most people talk. Sometimes I’ve used the word, “super,” like very. Still, it’s good to know other words. I thought crotchety meant chronically grumpy. It might be fun to call someone malapert since the average very rude person probably doesn’t know what it means.

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    1. I am not sure these are dictionary definitions but I suppose they get the point across. My dad always referred to what he considered big words as “fifty dollar words”. I need to use more of those!

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  12. I am guilty/fond of using very whenever I want to emphasize something. When I put my writing through Grammarly, it invariably suggests alternatives. I use the suggestions sometimes. But often, I stick to my use of “very” to the annoyance of the “Correctness” feature of Grammarly!

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