It is definitely not a grammatical issue, but it a good rule of thumb for writing, particularly academic writing. One of the first things that was drilled into me as an English major was to drop, “very,” and find a better adjective.
Also, yeah, a lot of these are very poor matches, especially without context, but one of my favorite things about the English language is that it is a very large, redundant language, but none of our words have the exact same connotation. Big, large, huge, enormous, gigantic, tremendous, mammoth, gargantuan, and humongous are all technically synonyms, but all conjure different images in the reader.
But yeah, telling someone to say, “fragile,” instead of, “very weak,” is dumb, given they could mean, “delicate,” or, “feeble.” And if you’re not writing a term paper, just say, “very.”
TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
“Hmmm you’re very dirty 😏”
“Hmmm you’re filthy 😏”
Nope, not the same.
NannerBanner@literature.cafe 2 months ago
As a personal thing, I’ve always detested that usage of the word big. More so than any of these ‘very’ replacements, there are so many words available to convey the meaning of that big.
smeenz@lemmy.nz 2 months ago
It’s big of you to say that
NannerBanner@literature.cafe 2 months ago
/shakes_fist
You come over here and say that to my face, you french sneeze!