Intensifiers and mitigators

Learn about intensifiers and mitigators such as really, extremely, rather and quite and do the exercises to practise using them.

Level: intermediate

Intensifiers

We use words like very, really and extremely to make adverbs stronger:

She speaks English very well.
They behaved really foolishly.
He put the glass down extremely carefully.

We call these words intensifiers. Other intensifiers are:

amazingly exceptionally incredibly remarkably particularly

We also use enough to say more about an adverb, but enough comes after its adverb:

She didn't win. She didn't play well enough.

Mitigators

We use words like fairly, rather and quite to make adverbs less strong:

She speaks English fairly well.
They behaved rather foolishly.
The children played quite happily.

We call these words mitigators. Mitigators are the opposite of intensifiers.

Intensifiers and mitigators 1

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Intensifiers and mitigators 2

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