The Adjectives You Can't Use with Very
Today we are talking about ‘non-gradable adjectives’, what they are and how we use them.
How to tell if an adjective is gradable or non-gradable
Let’s take the example ‘hot’ and ‘boiling’:
We can use gradable adverbs with ‘hot’: quite hot, fairly hot, really hot, very hot, extremely hot. As we can see there are many different types of ‘hot’ therefore it is a gradable adjective.
However, ‘boiling’ means ‘very/extremely hot’ - there is only one type of ‘boiling’ so we can’t use a gradable adverb like very with it.
Too complicated? Let’s look at it another way, using the same adjectives ‘boiling’ and ‘hot’:
In the above image we can see that a gradable adjective is one that sits along a continuum (the orange line), moving from a little hot to extremely hot.
Whereas in the above image we can see the non-gradable adjective ‘boiling’, which sits next to ‘very hot’ and ‘extremely hot’. Because it only sits in one place on our continuum line we cannot use it with a gradable adverb like ‘very’.
To summarise so far: we use gradable adjectives (hot, big, interested, difficult, tired) with gradable adverbs (fairly, quite, very, extremely), and we use non-gradable adjectives (boiling, fascinated, impossible, terrifying) with non-gradable adverbs (absolutely, really, nearly, totally).
Let’s look at some more examples:
Very awful => this is a non-gradable adjective so we can’t use a gradable adverb like very with it, so let’s change it to absolutely awful.
Very impossible => utterly impossible
Very terrified => extremely terrified
Very excellent => absolutely excellent
Very freezing => completely freezing
That’s it! Easy, right? If you’re ever not sure, try drawing a picture like the one above to see if your adjective is gradable or not. Keep up the hard work!