I tried out "very tired" and got "exhausted", "spent" and "flagging". Obligatory caveat: I'm a second-language English speaker but I've been fluent for some tw

I tried out "very tired" and got "exhausted", "spent" and "flagging". Obligatory caveat: I'm a second-language English speaker but I've been fluent for some twenty years and read and write English on a daily basis. I expected it to suggest "exhausted" but that just feels like a synonym (interestingly, "very exhausted" has no available suggestion). It also implies prior physical or mental effort, whereas "very tired" could also be the result of bad or insufficient sleep. Synonyms are rarely equivalent and this one just seems to suggest context that may be inappropriate. "Spent" seems like a more obvious example of this problem, putting the emphasis on depletion of energy rather than not having recovered in the first place. I'd also say it's less approachable as it's a colloquial metaphor. I know I had to do a double take when I came across this use as a learner. Either way, it's no more elegant than "very tired". "Flagging" throws me for a loop. I have no intutive sense what that word is even intended to mean in this context. The dictionary merely suggests it's a synonym for "exhausted" but provides no etymological information or context. I would guess it's metaphorical (in the sense of "giving up" by waving a flag of surrender, or signaling for help as if waving a flag) but I wouldn't have guessed the meaning from reading it without context. Especially as I've only ever seen it used as a transitive word, meaning to mark something for review or special treatment. Sure, avoid "very" if you want to write literature. But if you're writing for clarity rather than art, please stick to "very" if it avoids digging through a thesaurus just for the sake of it.