While "intimate" can mean be familiar or familial, "intimidate" is a much more common and threatening word; due to being so much more common I can imagine it wo

While "intimate" can mean be familiar or familial, "intimidate" is a much more common and threatening word; due to being so much more common I can imagine it would be easy to misread and get a very different feeling from what you had intended. "I am writing to intimidate you..." is definitely not a good message to send to your boss. > No wonder text is so emotionless and people misread and get angry Native speakers definitely struggle with this as well. There is a diffucult balance between being too succinct (curt, impolite) and excessively wordy (feels forced or contrived, muddles the message). Personally, when I communicate st work, I tend to phrase things as questions- either as a standalone comment or as a preamble to my argument. That way, I am (hopefully) clear that I am trying to be inclusive, rather than divisive, and I think it makes people less likely to project emotion from their own assumptions into what I write.