S03E18 - Understatement and Exaggeration

Hello and welcome to today's episode of the Gold Forest English podcast. As always, my name is Jordan.

Today, I want to talk about something that's very common in England, something that is very common in British English. It's about how we use adjectives—adjectives like hot, cold, tired, hungry—how we make them much bigger and sometimes much smaller to show our feelings. We are basically using adjectives in the wrong way on purpose. This is a very common part of British spoken English. So that's what we're going to look at today.

Let's start by talking about normal and extreme adjectives. When I talk about adjectives like this, I mean things like hot, cold, hungry, tired. These are normal adjectives. We would make them extreme by changing them to words like boiling, freezing, starving, exhausted. Those are the extreme versions.

These extreme adjectives have the meaning of very plus the normal adjective. So, for example, boiling means very hot. Hot is the normal adjective. So very hot is the same as boiling. Freezing means very cold. Starving means very hungry. Exhausted means very tired.

So because extreme adjectives—like boiling, freezing, starving, exhausted—have already got the meaning of very, we can't use the word very or really with them. So we don't say very boiling. We don't say really boiling, really freezing, very exhausted. We don't use really and very with these extreme adjectives. We use words like absolutely, or completely, or totally. Completely boiling, absolutely exhausted, totally freezing. Those words are often used with extreme adjectives.

And with normal adjectives, we use very and really: really hungry, very tired, really cold, very hot.

Let's take the pair hot and boiling as an example. If you're sitting in a very warm room, you might say, "It's very hot in here." That's normal. But if you're on a crowded train in the middle of the summer and you can't breathe easily, you might say, "I'm absolutely boiling!" It's extreme, it's strong.

So, in British English, people often use extreme words as a kind of exaggeration. Exaggeration means making things feel bigger than they really are. It's adding extra drama, for humour, to be funny, or to be friendly and casual. So this is exaggeration, and it's very common in English, especially in British English.

Somebody might say, "I'm absolutely starving!" when they ate maybe two or three hours ago. They are not really dying of hunger—which is what starving literally means. They're just ready for the next meal, or they want a snack. But they might use the very dramatic, strong word to make their conversation more colourful, friendly, and casual.

So we can use our extreme adjectives to be appropriate and correct. For example, on the crowded train where it's very hot and you can't breathe properly, you could say that it's boiling. This is correct, this is appropriate. You could also say it in a situation where it's not correct, just to add extra drama or humour. If you're wearing a light sweater, a small jumper, and it's a little bit warm, you could say, "I'm absolutely boiling!" It's obvious that you're not truly boiling. It's not really, really hot. You are exaggerating.

These are the two ways of using our extreme adjectives: correctly, or for exaggeration where you make it bigger than it truly is.

But interestingly, British people often do the opposite as well. It's called understatement. They will make a very big feeling sound very small.

So imagine your friend from England. You meet them and they look terrible: very grey face, very pale. They've got no energy, their eyes are half closed. They look completely exhausted. They obviously haven't slept well, and they are really, really, really tired. And you ask them, "Are you okay?" They might say, "Yeah, I'm just a little bit tired."

Now, they're not really a bit tired. They are completely exhausted. But they're using understatement to make the big feeling much smaller.

British people often use understatement to avoid sounding too dramatic or too demanding—like you are asking for somebody's help, you're asking for attention. It's very strong, it's very emotional, very direct. So we use understatement to make things feel smaller, even though the other person knows from your face or from your body, from the context, from the situation, they know your real feeling: you may be exhausted. But you are showing that you don't need or you don't want lots of attention. It's a kind of politeness. It's a way of saying, "I don't want to make a big fuss, a big problem, a big drama situation."

So we have to listen carefully and think about the context, and remember that a British person might use understatement.

Another example would be in an office situation. If a British person says something like, "I'm slightly concerned about the deadline," using the words slightly concerned feels quite small. Slightly means a little bit, and concerned is a small worry. But because we know that they're British, and if I know about the context and the situation, I might understand that they are probably quite worried. It is a serious concern for them. But when they use the words slightly concerned, it sounds more professional and more calm. The feeling is big, but the words are small.

So here we have two very British habits that are quite opposite, but happen frequently.

First, we've got the exaggeration style: using the extreme adjectives very casually, to be friendly and dramatic and funny. So, for example, "I'm absolutely freezing!" when the real situation is just a little bit cold. That's exaggeration.

And we also have understatement: using small, soft, normal adjectives to make a big problem sound small. This is a politeness strategy. For example, "I'm a bit tired" when actually, you are feeling completely exhausted.

This topic is quite a big one, and I just touched on it briefly in this podcast. So if you are interested in understatement and exaggeration, please do check out the blog post that I've written on this topic on GoldForestAcademy.com. In the blog post, I talk about different normal and extreme adjectives, and I also give more examples of exaggeration and understatement. So definitely go and check that out if you want to improve your natural British English.

All right, so that's going to be it for today's episode. I hope you're not feeling exhausted. Thank you very much for listening. I will see you in the next episode. Goodbye.