Incredibly annoying

 

Creative Commons image of Elvis Presley


Isn’t it incredible, the number of times “incredibly” is used in conversation and written communication. It featured numberous times in the UK leadership debate on July 17, but we don’t have to go that high (or should I say low) for examples. In the background as I write is the peerless quiz Pointless, where the host Alexander Armstrong has just told a contestant that her description of her rather ordinary job is “incredible”. 

Incredible and incredibly mean “impossible or difficult to believe”. Think of the claims that Elvis is alive and working in a chip shop in Birmingham. I know you are going to say, come on Angela, people say “amazing” all the time when they are not actually amazed but just being polite. So it’s not just the hyperbole I am criticising, but the crushing frequency with which it inappropriately pops up. We turn to the Financial Times …”the departing prime minister is now incredibly unpopular”.

 

Does that mean nobody could believe how unpopular BoJo is? I can. He’s a compulsive liar and a manic egotist who cares about nothing  but his own self-fulfillment. Not a ticket to universal approval – when at the same time the person leads a nation of 65 million into swamps of fear and risk.

 

Of course we/they don’t really mean that the ensuing fact cannot be believed, that everyone will just shake heads and say “Nah”. That ice-cream is incredibly delicious? That tennis player is incredibly good? That procedure is incredibly simple? There’s an awful lot of incredulity being asked of us. It feels rather exhausting

 

Step forward, “very”. Here is a modifier that accentuates the adjective or adverb, indicates it is an extreme degree. Very good; very simple. But, no, it is too dull. Poor old very. 

 

This is all getting nerdy, I know, and in a minute I will be expostulating that people don’t “watch on” at an event, THEY JUST WATCH. They look on. If they are watching on, that means they continue to watch over a longer period of time. Words matter!

 

There are other grammar nerds on LinkedIn, and I hope they bob up towards me as I’ve seen some of them in the corridor, as it were, and would love to make contact.



 

 

 

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