Showing posts with label understatement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label understatement. Show all posts

altogether something

Nov 1, 2026

Here's a story of curiosity and exploration and enjoying where it took me.

I was (orig. AmE) fooling around with a corpus interface (in preparation for teaching students how to use it), and I asked it for adjectives that go after the adverb altogether. I don't know why I chose that word, but I did. And I noticed something: in the British National Corpus (BNC), the word was followed by adjectives that struck me as strange. Things like:  altogether happy, altogether lovely, and altogether innocent.

Negative and positive?

At first, I wondered: does altogether have different semantic prosody in British and American English? Semantic prosody is when a word that could be defined in a neutral way nevertheless tends to occur in contexts that are mostly negative or mostly positive. So, the word ends up having bad or good connotations. I felt like I was used to altogether occurring in more negative contexts. 

Now, the first thing to do here is to ask: does the fact that happy follows altogether mean that altogether happy is referring to something good? The answer is no: looking at two words together is not enough because there could be a not lurking before those two words. And sure enough, all the BNC examples of altogether happy are actually describing a non-happy state:

Nine examples with 'altogether happy' highlighted: He wasn't altogether happy' 'ted was not altogether happy', 'he is not altogether happy', 'it was not an altogether happy experience', etc.

So in a lot of these cases, BrE is using not altogether+positive adjective, and it is probably often a form of British understatement. If rather than saying the congregation was unhappy, someone says they're not altogether happy, you can probably bet that the congregation was unhappy.

That said, the cases of altogether lovely and innocent were mostly not negated—so there was something else going on.

Which adjectives?

I wanted to compare it to American English, so I moved on to the Corpus of Global Web-Based English. I checked a few things:

  • Is altogether used more in BrE than in AmE?  
    • A bit:  20 times per million words (pmw) in BrE versus 17 in AmE.
      • But altogether has various uses, so...
  • Is altogether used to modify adjectives more in BrE than in AmE?
    • A tiny bit: 2.43 pmw v 2.17  in AmE for altogether ADJ (1.1x more common in BrE)
    • But the more complex the altogether construction, the more British English favo(u)rs it:
      • not altogether ADJ is .49 pmw in BrE & .37 in AmE  (1.3x more common in BrE)
      • an altogether ADJ (where the altogether ADJ is therefore in a noun phrase) is nearly twice as common in BrE (.7 pmw v .38).

So a phrasing like It was an altogether different experience probably sounds more British than American.

Then I looked at what the top adjectives following altogether in BrE and AmE were:

BrE AmE
different (240)  different (179)
new (38) new (20)
better (24)*clear (17)
*surprising (18) *sure (15)
darker (17) *surprising (10)
lovely, *sure (15)     useless (8)
*surprised (13) absent (7)
*clear (12) possible, unique, *happy, unexpected, ignorant (6)

Formatting key for the table:  (number) = number of occurrences in the corpus (~387 million words)
not found in the other country, not in the other's top 10 & at least 4x more frequent than the other country, not in the other's top 10 but   *predominantly negated

 

So, what we can see here for altogether + ADJ?
  • BrE & AmE have in common the ability to use altogether to describe absolute states (particularly when negated). In other words, altogether can be a synonym for completely or absolutely in both dialects.  If something (let's say a linguistic blog post) is not altogether clear, it's saying that there is a pinnacle of clarity that the blog post does not meet. If you say two things are altogether different, then you're saying that there's no way in which they are the same. (This is usually overstatement, but still, we can tell it's being used as an absolute state because it's not weird to say two things are completely different.)

  • BrE allows altogether with comparatives (darker, better and further down the frequency list: grander, bigger, harder, easier, higher), and AmE doesn't seem to like that. If an adjective is used in the comparative, that's a signal that it is a gradable adjective rather than an absolute one. So, BrE can use altogether with states that you could still have more of. In the following contexts, altogether seems to be a synonym of very much:   
                 
    • he's an altogether better player 
    • This vision is focused around an' Altogether Better Durham', 
    • This appears to be an altogether better bet.       
    • He strikes me as an altogether darker figure than Paisley  
    • Three years later he discovered something altogether darker 
    • This is an altogether darker affair than Babe's first adventure 
  • The mostly-AmE unnegated adjectives generally describe bad states: useless, absent, ignorant—which explains why I felt weird about hearing pleasant adjectives with altogether. The one mostly-BrE unnegated, non-comparative one is lovely—but I must note: in the corpus, it is mostly found in Muslim religious discourse.
The British use of altogether with comparative/gradable adjectives seems comparable to the use of altogether elsewhere in sentences, where it can mean 'on the whole'. Here's an example from the OED:
  • He was altogether a gentle and generous man.
Compare that to:
  • He was an altogether gentle and generous man.
For you, do they mean the same thing?

For me the first says 'all things considered, he was a gentle and generous man' and the second is more 'he was a completely gentle and generous man'. But I would suspect that that distinction may not feel as clear for BrE speakers, given the collocations we've seen above.

Has it always been this way?

As it stands, I can't find a dictionary that both (a) distinguishes the use of altogether as an adjective intensifier from it in other adverbial uses (some do, some don't), and (b) notes that the adjective-intensifier usage can sometimes (particularly in BrE) mean something other than 'completely'. And it's not covered in the grammars I've checked or in Algeo's British or American English?

Is that because it's new in BrE? I looked at a few of the altogether+comparative examples in the British part of Google Books, and it looks like altogether better has been used for a long time, as have some others. (Altogether worse, on the other hand, barely moves the needle.)

google ngram graph, showing altogether with better, larger, higher, darker, greater. Altogether better has the most usage and particularly high usage in the 19th century

So, if it's not new in BrE, could it be that it was taken to America and then lost there? Computer says yes:

Google ngram viewer graph showing lots of use of 'altogether better' in US and UK books in the 19th century, but then it starts falling in US after 1860s and is negligible in US after 1920 .


The Corpus of Historical American English shows that in the 19th century, it was common in AmE to use altogether with gradable adjectives like pleasant, lovely, probable, and easy—and without negation.



Investigating words is good for me

So I started this with something of a bias. An assumption that the more general use of altogether+ADJ must be newer—that people got more 'lax' in its use as time went on. And what I discovered was the opposite: that Americans have been 'tightening up' how this expression can be used. It's certainly not the only time American English has done such a thing—so I should have known better than to have that bias. But biased we all are. As long as we're willing to challenge those biases, we can learn things. 

I have an aside about AI and doing this kind of research, but I am going to save that for when I talk about this post in my Substack newsletter. So if that's of interest and you're not already subscribed, (more BrE) give us a follow at this link.
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sure, affirmative

Mar 4, 2017
This is one of those posts where I'm going to let someone else do most of the writing. I got this message from Justin a couple of weeks ago:

I’m from Malaysia, where BrE dominates in schools but AmE is prominent in pop culture (so too CanE and AusE). I was British educated there, before moving to the UK for boarding school and my undergrad. So I’d like to think of myself as pretty much a BrE speaker.

My girlfriend is American. A born-and-bred Wisconsinite. I’m currently living with her in Illinois as I pursue my Masters. This is partly the reason we so enjoy your blog, as it has helped clear up a number of differences we’ve come across.

One difference that gets me every time is the use of the word sure as an affirmative. When I use sure as an agreement, it is usually in response to a suggestion. I feel I am deferring to that suggestion, as if I am saying ‘I’ll go along with what is invariably your point’.

My girlfriend, however, uses sure as a simple ‘yes’ - whether or not it is in response to suggestion or a more general yes/no question.

So a typical interaction might go:

GF: ‘I’m feeling like having Chinese food tonight.’

*time passes*

Me: ‘So do you still want to have Chinese food tonight?’

GF: ‘Sure.’

To her, she is just saying 'yes' to the question. But, no matter how much I am reminded of her usage of the word, I am still thrown off every time because it seems as if she has turned her own suggestion into mine. It feels as if she’s deferring the responsibility of the suggestion to me. I don’t mean to say that I accuse her of this - she knows how this throws me, and we laugh about it - that's just my gut reaction based on my own usage of the word.

So my question - and I do apologise for the wall of text - is whether this is a BrE / AmE difference? What scant sources I can find online - due to all the context I need to unload before asking the question - seem to hint this. However, could it be that my own usage of the word is limited through my strange background? Is this a uniquely Midwestern AmE trait (my girlfriend’s family all so seem to use ‘sure’ in this way)? Or is it a case-by-case notion, where one’s personal circumstances lead to one usage or the other?


I have to thank Justin for typing that all out because it is a scenario that plays out in my house on a weekly basis. Spouse suggests something to do, somewhere to go, something to eat, and I say Sure and he (at this point, one feels, just to be difficult, because we've been through this many times) says "That means no, then." 

Vibrantmedia.com
I don't think it's just Midwestern. I've lived in the Midwest, New England, Texas, and upstate New York, and my Sures never caused a discernible problem till I moved to England.

This a hard thing to look up in a (orig. AmE) run-of-the-mill corpus, because so much about a Sure  depends on how it's said. There are 198 Yea(h), sure in the AmE part of the GloWBE corpus and 91 in the British, but that's an internet corpus, not spoken interaction, and it's far more likely there that the Yeah, sure is a sarcastic expression of doubt than a casual agreement to a suggestion. While I have access to some corpora with spoken language, they're pretty bad for this kind of thing (as I discovered when I tried to use them to study please). The transcripts in those corpora are overloaded with people having conversations about topics, but in real life we spend much less time debating the issues of the day or recounting a childhood memory and more on negotiations about what to eat or veiled accusations that the dishwasher has been loaded wrong.

There are some discussions of affirmative sure online, often from English learners who have noted it as something Americans do. This Huffington Post blog has a Connecticut mother of (orig. AmE) teenagers (so, probably close to my age) noting that people are now taking her sures as unenthusiastic. But her sures were delivered by text or social media, so the intonations weren't available for the readers to hear--making it a riskier place to use sure. So was it the medium, or do younger Americans use sure less? The trend might be toward(s) more exaggerated responses needed to show enthusiasm--e.g. great, awesome, or the  less (BrE) OTT cool. And we might be pretty far down the road of that trend.

(I've done a brief search for academic papers on sure, but had no luck finding much on this affirmative usage. If anyone knows of any, please let me know.)

In our house, as in Justin's relationship, sure miscommunications remain a problem we're aware of, but haven't managed to fix. The spouse thinks I should say something else, while I wonder why he can't just mentally translate it when he hears it from me, as he would for any other Americanism that slips out. If it sounds unenthusiastic, can't an Englishman just interpret it as a case of understatement (which Brits seem so eager to claim for their own)?

But sure is harder than a problem like sidewalk/pavement or tomayto/tomahto, since it's not a referential word (one that stands for things in the world), but more context- and relationship-dependent. The differences are less obvious and the usage/interpretation is more automatic. We're creatures of our own gut-reactions.
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just about

Jan 13, 2012
Continuing on the backlog of emailed requests, Ron Shields writes (well, wrote--in August) with:
I have noticed football commentators in Britain using the phrase just about when a player is successful as in "He just about made that pass". In AmE just about would mean "close but no cigar".
Indeed, for the 'did make it, but only by a small margin' meaning, AmE could just use just: He just made it into the goal. But we might even avoid that, since that could also mean 'a moment ago'. This ambiguity is probably more of a problem in AmE than in BrE because of the differences in past-tense marking. I'd probably say only just in this context, but I'm fairly contaminated by BrE at this point. The Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms gives only the meaning 'very recently' for only just. The two instances of only just made it in the Corpus of Contemporary American  English (COCA) are 'very recently' and the eight in the much smaller British National Corpus all mean 'barely'. I think this has firmly diagnosed my BrE contamination. I'll have to tell my American family to wear protection around me.

I must admit, I'm held back a bit* in my discussion here by a couple of things. First, finding examples of particular meanings of just about is not exactly easy. If you search for the two words in a corpus or on the web, you will find huge numbers of examples, most of them irrelevant--it's just about how common the words are (see what I did there?). So I've had to look for bigger stretches of text, like just about made it, in order to limit the results to useful ones. That means that anything interesting that I didn't think of, I didn't find. Second, we were supposed to (AmE/BrE) move/(BrE) move house this week. We discovered Monday that we were not moving (house) this week, or indeed next week, or indeed this  month. So all my books are packed (not the greatest of the current  inconveniences!), and therefore I can't consult a couple of things that might have been helpful. I will blog about English (BrE) estate agents/(AmE) real estate agents and the horrors (and vocabulary!) of  buying/selling property in England after this nightmare is over.

At any rate, the translation problem in just about isn't just about just.  Let's think about about. The (UK) Collins English Dictionary gives us this sense-definition, which is not to be found in the American Heritage Dictionary or Merriam-Webster:

about
7. used in informal phrases to indicate understatement I've had just about enough of your insults it's about time you stopped

Aha, the famous British understatement. Rather than saying I've had enough, you put an about in to soften the blow. And then a just to soften it more.

But one would say I've had just about enough of your insults in AmE too.  In fact, in COCA, there are 35 instances of about had it, including 16 just about had it. There might be a difference in perception here. To my AmE ear, I've just about had it is not an understatement. It means, if things don't change right away, I will have had it, and it's thus used as a warning. Whether BrE ears perceive that particular example as understatement is something that the mouths (or the typing fingers) that  share a brain with those ears will have to tell us. At any rate, the UK dictionary did feel the need to mention it as an understatement-marker and the US ones did not, and I think there's something to that.

Ron's example is a much clearer case of understatement. The claim is that the pass was made, but it is stated as if the pass was not quite made in order to communicate that it almost wasn't made.

To give a few more examples, found by Google-searching "just about made  it" (plus 'British' and 'American', because I originally searched with the  hope that I'd find some dialect commentary):

We just about made it through Christmas. (Temple Audio, Ltd)

Well, I just about made it to hunt out some British talent for you all  this week. I've tried to include more variety this time... (Road Runner Records)

I think you just about made it to the studio in time for your show!  (commenter on Simon Mayo's BBC Radio 2 blog)
There are also examples of the (orig. AmE) 'close but no cigar' type on this search and (of course) some that are ambiguous. But the above examples all come from the first page of results, clearly describe events that did happen (rather than ones that almost happened), and are all related (at least) to the UK. (The second is located in the US, but is a music scout who seems particularly Europe-focused, so one can only guess about his nationality or his linguistic contamination level.)

 And on that note, I'm about finished.


 * My ubiquitous bits are further evidence of my contamination. And yes, that is a double entendre. But don't think about it too much, please.
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quite

Jul 31, 2008
I am often asked to cover the differences between AmE and BrE use of quite as an intensifier (i.e. a modifier of adjectives that tells you 'how much'). When asked, I point people to this post. When they write back and say "I meant how it means opposite things in BrE and AmE", I reply "Read the post. All the way. To the bottom." (Go ahead and picture me at the front of a classroom. I have them quaking in their boots, I do.)

Actual Russell Howard
But I just have to share with you this little item that came through the door yesterday. It's from a man who looks like an over-coiffed Russell Howard who wants to be my MP (Member of Parliament). Me, I'm waiting for Russell Howard to run. Our Howard-wannabe (a member of the Conservative Party) has been "out and about on the streets of Brighton meeting as many people as possible and listening to residents' views and opinions". But he didn't meet me, so he had his lackeys litter my front hallway instead. He wants to know:
How concerned are you about the proposed NHS changes and their effects on the Royal Sussex County Hospital?

Very [] Quite [] Not at all []
So there we have it. An illustration of how BrE quite differs from AmE quite. In BrE it means 'not so much', in AmE it means 'very much'. So while it's the middle ground in this BrE survey, for an AmE speaker, the first two choices are way on one side of the scale, so no moderate choice seems to have been offered. Better Half thinks that the question is (BrE) cheeky, because the interpretation of quite depends a lot on context, in that understatement with quite can be used as a forceful statement, given the right intonation. And the influence of AmE has probably muddies the waters as well. What a politician! I look forward to seeing how the results are interpreted.

P.S. A kind reader and fellow blogger has started a page for this blog using the Blog Networks feature on Facebook. It needs more readers to confirm that it's my blog before it will take feeds from the blog, etc. So, if you want to identify with this blog on Facebook, please come by and give us a click!
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british overstatement

Jul 13, 2006
The British are masters and mistresses of understatement, one is told. Yeah, well, maybe.

For your consideration, my current list of most hated, painfully overused words:
  • essential
  • fanatical
  • excellence
I've grumped about excellence once before, and I'm sure that it's come in from US corporate-speak. So let's concentrate on the adjectives, which seem to represent the full extent of many advertising copywriters' adjectival vocabularies.

The bus that goes past my house says that it offers Essential Travel for our City. If I weren't boycotting the word, I could shop at Essential Records or Pet Essential or let (AmE prefers rent) property at Time Essential and listen to The Essential Mix on Radio 1 or read the dozen or so publications that say they are the essential guide to the city and what's going on in it before heading over to the Essential Festival, essentially.

If fanatical is less used, it's only because there seems to be a rule that it must only be used in alliterative phrases. The Odeon cinema (AmE prefers movie theater) chain is Fanatical About Film. Upper Crust sandwich shops are Fanatical about Freshness. And everyone else is Fanatical about Football.

Another relevant example is brilliant (informally, brill), which in recent years was the overstater of choice among young people. Now it's amazing, which I hadn't noticed until a Swedish colleague pointed it out. We were in my office when a student came and asked to borrow a book. Our interaction went something like this:
Me: Here you go.

Student: Amazing! Thanks!

Me: You can give it back to me at seminar.

S: You're amazing! Thanks!

SwedCol: [muffled giggles]

These are not the words of an understating culture--and yet they are so repetitively and unimaginatively used. One can't really find too much fault with the young people, as youth everywhere get infected by the buzzwords of their age. But the advertisers? Aren't they supposed to make us want to buy their product, rather than wanting to track them down in their offices and bludgeon them with thesauruses?

Could it be that overstatement is so foreign to British culture that those who try to do it cannot help but do it badly? Perhaps overstatement should be left to Americans, who do it so effortlessly. Mission Accomplished!
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Abbr.

AmE = American English
BrE = British English
OED = Oxford English Dictionary (online)