Vastly

Many studies have posited that women use more intensifying adverbs (such as 'really', 'so', 'ever so' etc) than men in their speech. The 18th-century statesman, Lord Chesterfield, railed against these tendencies of his 'fair countrywomen'' in an article in The World (read it here). Here's a paragraph from the article about his bête noire, the word 'vastly':

Not content with enriching our language by words absolutely new, my fair countrywomen have gone still farther, and improved it by the application and extension of old ones to various and very different significations. They take a word and change it, like a guinea into shillings for pocket money, to be employed in the several occasional purposes of the day. For instance, the adjective vast and it’s adverb vastly mean any thing, and are the fashionable words of the most fashionable people. A fine woman (under this head I comprehend all fine gentlemen too, not knowing in truth where else to place them properly) is vastly obliged, or vastly offended, vastly glad, or vastly sorry. Large objects are vastly great, small ones are vastly little; and I had lately the pleasure to hear a fine woman pronounce, by a happy metonymy, a very small gold snuff-box that was produced in company, to be vastly pretty, because it was so vastly little. Mr. Johnson will do well to consider seriously, to what degree he will retain the various and extensive significations of this great word.

 

Unfortunately, despite criticising others for using 'vastly', Chesterfield also did so himself. For instance in a letter dated June 13, 1749, he wrote to a lady friend "Upon my word, madam, the chiding strain becomes you vastly ...".

 

The OED shows that vastly was used from the mid-17th century to mean 'immensely', but then goes on to say that it was a very fashionable word in the 18th century, when its meaning weakened to an intensive adverb meaning 'extremely' or 'very'. There are citations from Fanny Burney and Jane Austen, but otherwise the examples are those of male writers.

 

Comments

[Alan]

I have not seen that essay before. It also contains an amusing anecdote to justify the need for a standarised spelling system, which Johnson's dictionary would try to supply.
How do you attribute it to Lord Chesterfield? I read that there were 4 or 5 contributors to the journal.

[Virtual Linguist]

Thanks, Alan. I don't know why the website didn't attribute it to Lord Chesterfield, but you only need to google a sentence out of the extract to find plenty of hits confirming that it is his work. This digitised book of his works, for instance, - put 'vastly' in the search box. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BrUNAQAAMAAJ&pg=PR54&lpg=PR54&dq=Large+objects+are+vastly+great,+small+ones+are+vastly+little&source=bl&ots=DXEDLycxVL&sig=OkbzBQdDVuNk-u_7JAUWdfSJ3bU&hl=en#v=onepage&q=vastly&f=false

The OED also makes reference to Chesterfield's comments on 'vastly'. Have you got access to the OED (if you have a library card, you probably have)? If not, I'll forward the 'vastly' entry to you.