Qualifiers and Intensifiers

How are you this morning? I’m happy.

How is the weather today? It’s warm. 

I want to know how happy you are and how warm it is.

OK! I can use qualifiers and intensifiers to tell you how happy I am or how warm it is. We use them to express more precisely or exactly what we want to say.

Qualifiers are words we use to limit or restrict the meaning of describing words (adverbs or adjectives). We use qualifiers to decrease the strength of a describing word.. 

You said that you are happy.  Happy in that sentence is an adjective that describes you.  If you say “I am sort of happy.” You are qualifying  - taking a little away from how happy you feel. “sort of”  is a qualifier.

Some other words that take away/ limit/qualify the strength of an adjective or adverb: “slightly” and  “somewhat” are others. “kind of” and “sort of” are phrases – two words together that do the same thing. If you say you are “kind of happy”, I know that you are  on the low end of “happy”.

if I want to tell you I am on the higher end of “happy” I  use an intensifier to make the “happy feeling stronger or more intense. The most common intensifier is “very”. “I am very happy.“ If we say “I am very, very happy!' that happy is even stronger  A similar intensifier is “really” . We can repeat “really”, too. We can say “I am really, really happy that I got a new job.”

“quite”  (q-u-i-t-e) is another word that makes descriptions stronger. I can say "I had quite a nice time at the party.” "Quite"  less strong or intense than very or really.

Another intensifier is “pretty”. When we use pretty to describe attractive females or clothing that belongs to females. We can also use “pretty” to describe an object that looks nice, like a pretty picture or to describe the  weather. “It’s a pretty day”.

A different use of “pretty” is to intensify a description:“The test was “pretty hard.” “Pretty and “quite” are about equal. “extremely” is a strong intensifier. It makes a description very, very strong. 

To rank the qualifiers we have talked about from weakest to strongest: sort of, kind of, slightly and somewhat are all equal qualifiers. "I am sort of/kind of/somewhat/slightly/ tired.”  all tell you that I am a little tired. 

And Intensifiers from lowest to highest in intensity: “quite” & “pretty “are equal, “very” & “really” are a little stronger. If you repeat very, very or really, really it makes them even stronger. “extremely” is a high intensity intensifier.

There are quite a few others intensifiers and qualifiers! We hope you will recognize them when you hear those we talked about today. Now, dear listener, listen for the qualifiers and intensifiers in our short conversation.

A: Did you watch that last World Series Game?

B: I did! I usually think baseball is pretty boring and quite slow, but that game was really exciting.

A: Yeah! It was very, very exciting!

B : I was kind of sad that Toronto lost. 

A: I was sort of sad, too. But both teams played extremely well.

A: I agree. The game was quite long.  I stayed up pretty late to watch it until the end, though.

B: Me, too! This morning I woke up quite late. 

A: Same for me! But the World Series is only once a year, right?

B: You are very right!

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