2.40 Showing strong feelings: emphasizing adjectives

You can emphasize your feelings about something that you mention by putting an adjective such as 'complete', 'absolute', and 'utter' in front of a noun.

• He made me feel like a complete idiot.
• Some of it was absolute rubbish.
• ...utter despair.
• ...pure bliss.

You generally use an adjective of this kind only when the noun indicates your opinion about something.

Because they are used to show strong feelings, these adjectives are called emphasizing adjectives.

Here is a list of adjectives used for emphasis:

• absolute, complete, entire, outright, perfect, positive, pure, real, total, true, utter