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Oh my God, my roommate is officially insane.
She just spent the past couple hours at work ranking words according to percentages. Here's the e-mail she forwarded to me in all its ridiculous glory:
Okay. Now.
There are problems with this scale (none of which are my fault), the biggest of which is that sometimes it ignores the literal meanings of words for the sake of conversational accuracy. There are, for instance, four different adverbs (totally, completely, wholly, and entirely) that should all equal 100 percent, but "completely" is the only one I buy. Most people these days are too liberal with "totally" (e.g. "That guy was totally checking you out"), and consequently it can mean anywhere from 75 to 99 percent. "Wholly" has similar problems in that is used almost exclusively for emphasis, and though it has a higher and narrower range -- 83 to 99 percent -- than "totally," its users are typically less likely to define it properly if asked. "Entirely" is its own beast, and usually means 96 percent, as in "It's entirely up to you" (leaving room for implicit 4-percent mandatory consideration of feelings of speaker).
I rank the remaining adverbs as follows:
minimally: 3 percent
hardly: 5 percent
merely: 12 percent
slightly: 17 percent
partially: 25-28 percent [Technical meaning aside, "partially" always belongs at the lower end of the scale because of expressions like "You are partially right," which suggests that "You" are at least mostly -- see below for "mostly" -- wrong.]
mainly: 55 percent
largely: 67 percent
primarily: 75-80 percent
mostly: 90 percent
nearly: 92-97 percent
strongly: 98 percent
ridiculously: 99 percent
[The next two imply more than the whole, as in "My, you are looking especially sheveled today" -- meaning "You" look great -- or "My freshman English seminar professor was exceedingly unpleasant" -- meaning she was absolutely (99.5 percent) horrifying (horrifying = 3unpleasant plus or minus the square root of negative one -- don't question my math skills, I took BC calc).]
especially: 110 percent
exceedingly: 120 percent
The adjectives are easier to deal with, if only because I can only think of a few at the moment:
almost: 6 percent
somewhat: 33 percent
rather: 50-65 percent
quite: 77 percent
very: 94 percent
Finally, nouns and phrases. Nouns don't lend themselves as easily to the percentage system, but they do exist as multiples of one another. By which I mean the following: A "touch" is roughly one fourth of the standard "bit" (a "wee bit" is less than a "little bit," but is still more than a "touch"), a "mite" equals three "bits", a "smidgen" equals two "mites", and "a lot" equals at least thirty smidgens. Now, the phrases:
not at all: zero percent
next to nothing: 2 percent
not so much: maybe 17 percent
kind of: 23 percent
sort of: 42 percent
to some extent: 56 percent
to a large extent: 71-85 percent
quite a bit (oooh -- getting fancy and compund now!): 93 percent
a great deal: 98 percent
there you have it,
--a
Ladies and gentlemen, I've found a bigger word geek than myself. I did not believe such an animal existed, but there she is.
P.S. Anyone who can tell me which movie I'm quoting in this entry's title gets a big shiny gold star.
She just spent the past couple hours at work ranking words according to percentages. Here's the e-mail she forwarded to me in all its ridiculous glory:
Okay. Now.
There are problems with this scale (none of which are my fault), the biggest of which is that sometimes it ignores the literal meanings of words for the sake of conversational accuracy. There are, for instance, four different adverbs (totally, completely, wholly, and entirely) that should all equal 100 percent, but "completely" is the only one I buy. Most people these days are too liberal with "totally" (e.g. "That guy was totally checking you out"), and consequently it can mean anywhere from 75 to 99 percent. "Wholly" has similar problems in that is used almost exclusively for emphasis, and though it has a higher and narrower range -- 83 to 99 percent -- than "totally," its users are typically less likely to define it properly if asked. "Entirely" is its own beast, and usually means 96 percent, as in "It's entirely up to you" (leaving room for implicit 4-percent mandatory consideration of feelings of speaker).
I rank the remaining adverbs as follows:
minimally: 3 percent
hardly: 5 percent
merely: 12 percent
slightly: 17 percent
partially: 25-28 percent [Technical meaning aside, "partially" always belongs at the lower end of the scale because of expressions like "You are partially right," which suggests that "You" are at least mostly -- see below for "mostly" -- wrong.]
mainly: 55 percent
largely: 67 percent
primarily: 75-80 percent
mostly: 90 percent
nearly: 92-97 percent
strongly: 98 percent
ridiculously: 99 percent
[The next two imply more than the whole, as in "My, you are looking especially sheveled today" -- meaning "You" look great -- or "My freshman English seminar professor was exceedingly unpleasant" -- meaning she was absolutely (99.5 percent) horrifying (horrifying = 3unpleasant plus or minus the square root of negative one -- don't question my math skills, I took BC calc).]
especially: 110 percent
exceedingly: 120 percent
The adjectives are easier to deal with, if only because I can only think of a few at the moment:
almost: 6 percent
somewhat: 33 percent
rather: 50-65 percent
quite: 77 percent
very: 94 percent
Finally, nouns and phrases. Nouns don't lend themselves as easily to the percentage system, but they do exist as multiples of one another. By which I mean the following: A "touch" is roughly one fourth of the standard "bit" (a "wee bit" is less than a "little bit," but is still more than a "touch"), a "mite" equals three "bits", a "smidgen" equals two "mites", and "a lot" equals at least thirty smidgens. Now, the phrases:
not at all: zero percent
next to nothing: 2 percent
not so much: maybe 17 percent
kind of: 23 percent
sort of: 42 percent
to some extent: 56 percent
to a large extent: 71-85 percent
quite a bit (oooh -- getting fancy and compund now!): 93 percent
a great deal: 98 percent
there you have it,
--a
Ladies and gentlemen, I've found a bigger word geek than myself. I did not believe such an animal existed, but there she is.
P.S. Anyone who can tell me which movie I'm quoting in this entry's title gets a big shiny gold star.
