Every time I hear someone say ‘eh’ in a questioning tone or to mean ‘um actually’ I lose my shit. Or even just to play something down.
Like I literally come to hate the person instantly. Its a very strong feeling on a very small sound.
Instant downvotes if I see it on Lemmy too. HATE IT.
How about all y’all?
There’s this process in language where intensifiers — words that amplify the strength of the meaning of the rest of the phrase — tend to become used in areas that they aren’t really truly appropriate in and thus “weaken” in meaning.
So, for example, “awesome” once truly meant “awe-inspiring”, but it’s been used enough in weaker senses the past several decades here in California that it doesn’t really mean that any more. It just means “very good” now.
I don’t think that the Brits do that with “awesome” — or at least not as much — but they like to use “colossally” in a similar way.
The above Wikipedia link has a list of intensifiers, including “literally”, and you can probably recognize a bunch of them that have “weakened”.
Epic