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GLOWBE (which I linked above) has Americans in the wild using both senses of quite. If anything it looks like they use it as an intensifier more often than we d
by bovine3dom 6y ago
GLOWBE (which I linked above) has Americans in the wild using both senses of quite. If anything it looks like they use it as an intensifier more often than we do.
Wikipedia seems to be more in line with my experience, too:
> In AmE the word quite used as a qualifier is generally a reinforcement, though it is somewhat uncommon in actual colloquial American use today and carries an air of formality: for example, "I'm quite hungry" is a very polite way to say "I'm very hungry". In BrE quite (which is much more common in conversation) may have this meaning, as in "quite right" or "quite mad", but it more commonly means "somewhat", so that in BrE "I'm quite hungry" can mean "I'm somewhat hungry".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_American_and_British_English https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_American_and_B...
- globular-toast 6y agoGLOWBE seems to be stuff scraped from forums. Unless I'm missing something. I think there's a huge difference with how "quite" is used in written and spoken contexts. The more I think about it, I think the word can mean quite a lot of things and it's mostly driven by context and non-verbal cues.
- bovine3dom 6y agoYeah, it is stuff from forums and similar places. It's interesting that you have such a different experience of it to me.