Can you say very delicious

A similar problem occurs with the word unique , where very may be used more often than with delicious. I feel that "absolutely delicious" is a much more usual collocation that "very delicious". I don't know to what extent this is because of the gradability issue - it might just be a matter of what I usually hear. Myridon Senior Member Texas. But you can find " absolutely delicious ".

Click to expand Myridon said:. I would be much more likely to say very delicious than absolutely delicious. I wouldn't say either of "very freezing" or "absolutely freezing". What is this "Standard English" you refer to? I see both very and absolutely as emphatics that can be used to intensify the meaning of what follows. I can divide, for example, food dishes into those that are delicious and those that are not. In the former category, I doubt whether I would find them "equally delicious" so there would be degrees.

I conclude that I may use delicious as "gradable"! JulianStuart said:. Everything Emily bakes is absolutely delicious but her latest creations red velvet cupcakes with cointreau frosting are the most delicious yet. No they shouldn't. Non-gradable adjectives do not normally have comparative and superlative forms: freezing, more freezing, the most freezing dead, deader, the deadest unclear, more unclear, the most unclear.

I see that anonymous document you cite as part of someone's general description for teaching English and it is good guidance. If you follow it you will not be incorrect. However, it is not a universally accepted description of "correct" and "incorrect". As a brief description of the issue, it cannot cover all the usages.

Water obviously can be "quite hot" or "very hot" etc, but it can also be "boiling gently" or "boiling furiously" - although it is true we would not say "very boiling". So "boiling" is not "unmodifiable" and some people have their own scale for "delicious".

English usage issues are often quite subtle and often don't submit neatly into "correct" and "incorrect". Ok but almost 80 percent Native English speakers agreed with my analysis.

It could still be tasty, but not delicious. A subversion of this part of language occurred around 40 years ago, with using strong intensifiers most, absolutely, totally with certain strong adjectives excellent, cool, ace, etc that is still said in 'skater' culture and occasionally otherwise, today. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams?

Learn more. Why are things often "very tasty", but rarely "very delicious" Ask Question. Asked 5 years, 8 months ago. Active 3 years, 10 months ago. Viewed 12k times. Improve this question. FumbleFingers FumbleFingers k 45 45 gold badges silver badges bronze badges. From this link : "Delicious" is a strong adjective for "tasty". Typically, you use absolute adverbs absolutely, utterly, etc with strong [adjectives], and gradable adverbs very, really, quite with gradable adjectives. On the other hand, "really delicious" is 3.

Also, before , very delicious was very common. But as this site points out , "strong adjectives" can couple with absolutely, really , whereas "base adjectives" couple with very, really. So your really delicious effectively outperforms really tasty simply because delicious is more common than tasty in the first place.

But my chart above only covers the last century - if you check the century before that, it seems pretty clear delicious wasn't considered a strong adjective back then or the "rule" didn't yet exist!

Because English. Show 1 more comment. Active Oldest Votes. We do not say something is "very enormous" or someone is "very brilliant". Food is universal.

Everybody has to eat! So people want to find tasty, healthy food, the best places to eat, etc. In fact, The Daily Meal even claims that just talking about food might make you healthier.

What do you think? In The Huffington Post , award-winning chef Marcus Samuelsson talks about how food cuts across cultures. Every culture in every country has its own cuisine style of cooking and this is what makes travel so fascinating. You not only get to enjoy the sights and sounds, but you also know there are always new and exciting food adventures waiting for you.

Food is, of course, a great way to meet people and make friends. When people share a meal, you can be sure the discussions about food, restaurants and recipes are going to be endless.

In fact, small talk is an important part of business English, and f or that, the resource that I would most recommend is Creativa. Creativa provides premium, highly produced videos for learning English and business communication skills.

Creativa provides entertaining videos, useful but unexpected tips, and goes beyond just English to teach you body language, intonation and specific pronunciation tips. Creativa is a new product from the FluentU team. Food is an important topic of conversation to master. For another top introduction to food vocabulary and all the delicious ways to talk about food, check out the video below! For more top content and exciting videos, subscribe to the FluentU English YouTube channel and hit the notification bell.

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Check out the free trial to start devouring cooking videos, cake decorating videos and food market commercials—among many other types of videos! Ever notice how the word delicious is frequently used to describe food? Using this word too often can become boring. Have you tried the chocolate cake? If something tastes better than you expected, you could use the word wow to express your surprise.