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Comment by sker | Hacker News Reader

I was always bothered by the overuse of the word "pretty" on the Internet in place of "very." As a non-native English speaker, I grew up thinking of pretty as synonym of beautiful. Now that I see everyone using it as they would use very, I find it hard to parse.

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"pretty" as an adverb to mean "to a moderately high degree" is pretty standard for English speakers. "It's pretty hot" means it's more than warm, but not hot".

Interestingly, the forms that you liken to "beautiful" actually parse to a native English speaker as "attractive but not quite beautiful".

So, on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the top), "pretty" has the connotation of maybe a 7 or 8 on any scale, beauty or otherwise. And that's basically how it always parses out in English. Just consider it as a 7-8 whatever on a 1-10 scale.

note if the scale is inverse, it's the same. Suppose 1-10 was a scale of ugliness (with 10 being most ugly) "pretty ugly" is still a 7-8 on that scale. Same with "pretty cold" if the 10 means "coldest possible".

"very" is used to emphasize something. "She's very pretty." Means she's somewhere between pretty and outright beautiful, but more on the beautiful side ("she's almost beautiful" has a bad connotation that there's something wrong with her).

"It's very hot" would mean not only is it hot, but it's a little extra hot.

It's like adding a .5 to anything on that 10 point scale.

So if "hot" is 10, very hot is a 10.5.

You rarely use it with words that have a moderate intention, except for specific effect, "it's very lukewarm" is not something you'd probably regularly hear. But "it's very cold" is.

Someone saying "it's pretty quiet here" is saying something like "it is quiet, but not silent, here".

"This curry is pretty hot" would mean it is hot, and hotter than normal, but not very hot in the context of curries.

So there's something in there about the context and that it is a modifier for "more" but not "much more".

I think "pretty" is often used hyperbolically:

>"This curry is pretty hot" would mean it is hot, and hotter than normal, but not very hot in the context of curries. //

Probably what they mean, if they're British - and especially if male, is that the curry is so frigging hot it's bordering on inedible and likely giving them chemical burns but they're going to eat it anyway either to show "good manners" or prove they're well hard.

I think this is a bad thing for a different reason; people are using "pretty" to adjust expectation downward. saying "pretty fun" is less suggestive than just "fun". It's become a qualifier used for widespread ass-guarding in social situations.

It's not used in place of "very", it means "somewhat" or "mostly". "Pretty good" means not all good but not all bad either. If a server at a restaurant asks you, "How is your meal?" and you respond, "Pretty good", you should be prepared to have them ask, "What's wrong with it?"

I think this varies a lot depending on which english speaking communities you are in and your tone of voice.

Personally I often say something was pretty good and mean it as quite high praise or at least better than I expected. I think (hope) my tone of voice would make that apparent though.

Same here. I grew up in New England, where I think this usage is pretty common. People delight in giving me grief "you are only 'pretty happy'? Shouldn't you be happy...."

I am a native English speaker who uses pretty that way often, and it still bothers me. When I was younger I always wrote pritty, and treated it as a separate word all together. I stopped because too many people thought I just couldn't spell.

Where I grew up we used "wicked" as an intensifier, as in "he is wicked nice." Sound any better?

No, but im guessing you grew up in or near Boston?

My first thought as well, but my knowledge of Boston doesn't extend much farther than Good Will Hunting, so...

"Wicked" was extremely common in Vermont where I grew up, and I expect it still is. I sometimes find myself using it in everyday speech and it never seems to raise an eyebrow even out west here. "Friggin" is another word that I think is mostly a New England thing.

Where I am "friggin" has the context of a junior high kid who thinks it's a bad swear word, but doesn't quite have the nerve to say "fuck". So you don't generally hear it from people out of their teens.

That's New England dialect. Almost nobody says that outside of New England but people commonly know what it means.

It was used in Perth, AU when I was there ~15 years ago.

How do you handle "fairly"? It is similarly polyvalent.

I take fairly to mean less than pretty. Oh somewhat like "ok." or the newer word "meh."

Tone of voice and situation sometimes counts though.

In order:

fairly > pretty > [the word] > very

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