0 a word, especially an adverb or adjective, that has little meaning itself but is used to add force to another adjective, verb, or adverb:
1 a word, esp. an adverb, that is used to add force to another word or phrase:
Perhaps surprisingly, given the association with women, the use of intensifiers is also associated with colloquial usage and nonstandard varieties.
Do different communities have different "layers" of intensifiers?
Using this as a baseline, our analysis is restricted to adjectival heads, and of these, only in constructions that could possibly be modified by intensifiers.
Furthermore, in line with the expected pathways of change for intensifiers, very much appears to have started to lose intensifying force.
Taken together, the seven articles reflect well the different approaches adopted in current work on intensifiers and will hopefully stimulate further research in the field.
The intensifier that most commonly licenses taboo terms is so.
It is an easy task to find the intensifiers themselves, but difficult, if not impossible, to find where they could have occurred but did not.
Extrapolating from these observations, use of intensifiers with predicate adjectives could be taken as evidence for a later stage in the delexicalization process.
Intensifiers are adverbs or adverbial phrases that strengthen the meaning of other expressions and show emphasis. Words that we commonly use as intensifiers include absolutely, completely, extremely, highly, rather, really, so, too, totally, utterly, very and at all:
