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Show HN: Insteadofvery.com (insteadofvery.com)
47 points by 4m1rk on May 12, 2024 | hide | past | favorite | 46 comments
As non-native English speakers, we're often advised to avoid overusing intensifiers like "very". This is a simple app to find synonyms of "very x" phrases that are not always possible to find using a standard thesaurus.

Built it using OpenAI, FastAPI, and MongoDB (to cache the results).



I like very though. It's very very veritably vivacious.

I can't stand people who care about this stuff. The purpose of language is communication. If you understood what was said, the language used did it's job. Those alternatives to very are valid and if your intent is precision then I can see why you would use them. But my counter argument is, "very" is understood by a wider audience and is less confusing.

The same reasoning applies in programming does it not? Is it not considered good coding practice to use syntax and features that are easily understood by junior devs? Shouldn't complex syntax and features be used sparingly where needed?

When is superb required over "very nice"?

The reality is that language does have rules and for good reason. But grammar nazis use their superior knowledge of those rules to gatekeep random things and use those rules to manipulate others to their advantage.

Using rarely used words in a langauge is just as bad as using jargon or rare dialects.

If a random 2.0 gpa highschool kid can understand you. Your vocabulary is perfect.


|I can't stand people who care about this stuff. The purpose of language is communication.

Your response makes me think of Kevin from the office... “Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick"

Yes, the point of language is communication, but why limit yourself? Elevate your vocabulary! Eloquence is enjoyable. Increased nuance adds depth to expression. Instead of relying on vanilla words like "very," embrace the richness of language.


"Few word" is quantity, this is a quality question.

If you are writing to sound eloquent and for the joy of writing then you are not who I am talking about. For most people, especially in a work setting, communication is the goal, to make sure you are understood well.

There is a famous story of a british platoon in ww2 I think calling for US navy support and saying something like "we are in a bit of trouble" or something like that, the US navy commander thought that meant they need help but not urgently so they were deprioritized and died. If both sides used simple and well understood language it would have been avoided. Your eloquence or someone else's use of jargon, jive, localized english,etc... is a miscommunication liability.


To be honest this is one of the more genius things Kevin has said. I respected him for it.

To me complaining about very is some sort of cringey pseudointelligent competition.

In many cases trying to use something else instead of very will add some weird implication or undertone that makes the meaning seem unnecessarily different.

Don't make language more complicated than it needs to be.


Imagine cooking with no herbs or spices, save for salt. Your food would be nutritionally complete and inoffensive, but bland. You could translate novels into Simple English or Newspeak, but would you enjoy reading them?

And isn't it a bit patronizing to assume that English learners want to settle for being understood rather than being felt?


Bad analogy, herbs and spice also should be used sparingly not in abundance. Less is more. Use them where it makes sense not as a default.

My comment was for english speakers as a whole not just learners.


I care about it in my own writing. I know I overuse certain phrases and it bothers me. For long-form writing I use iA Writer and have it flag words on my denylist whenever they creep into my text. I wish I could use that everywhere.


> When is superb required over "very nice"?

Superb Owl season!


>So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women - and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do.


Literally never heard the word morose before as a native speaker. Very works just fine and doesn't have nearly as much of a problem of being the 'wrong' word to use when you don't know, versus someone looking at this list and then trying to say something like 'abysmally tired'.


That's not really very good advice. It's good to have a wide vocabulary, but substituting one phrase for another isn't really an improvement. The words mean something slightly different. Poetry happens when you choose precisely the word you want.

Even better is to avoid the adjective entirely, unless that is precisely what you want. Usually a poet will want to stir the emotion, which is better shown than told. You have to dig really deep to find a way to express what that sadness means, which will usually not involve the word "sad" at all. Use of the word "very" is a strong hint that you have more to say by phrasing it entirely differently.

He's right about the wooing women, though. Not literally, but that's the right way to teach teenage boys. Women dig men who communicate well.


Counterpoint: very tiree and exhausted are two different levels of weariness. Exhausted means you've reached capacity. Very tired means you are tired much but not yet exhausted. You reduced specificity for the sake of conformity.


Which is also couched in off-puttingly heterocentric language. What if you’re not a boy, and what if you’re not interested in wooing women? Is just not a very big deal to be lazy in that case?


It's a movie from 1989 about an all-boys school in 1959 that still managed to include a bunch of LGBTQ subtext; I think it's fair to read this line as commentary on lazy writing instead of sexuality.


Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Mark Twain


Good quote, but I think editors in our time are more likely to 'upgrade' the profanity into something more intense than they are to remove it.


"There are three types of lies: lies, lies, and statistics"

- editor of someone who was probably not Mark Twain


What about guidance on which of the terms to use? (An example sentence isn't as useful as definition or discussion.)


Agreed. Context sometimes feels like the first casualty when language is intensified.


I like the concept a lot. Was hoping there would be a crowdsourced element to it — a way to suggest our own synomys rather than just relying on the LLM.

Oh, and heads up, right now looking up anything with a forward slash (/) fails with an Internal Server Error and no output to the end user.


Thanks for the idea and the bug report. I mean anything relying on crowdsourcing is a chicken-and-egg problem. Will add it if people start using it.


Actually I have seen people using “Very Good” more often than its alternatives.


Right after "very horny", there's the entry for "very hard".

"My dick is onerous" might have been a phrase construct that went through my mind.


Nice site, would you be putting it on GH at some point? I'm very interested, no, captivated by simple projects like this using FastAPI and want to learn that


That's very neat.


Can you make one of these for “super” please – I find how its use has crept into language to be super annoying.


very annoying


“Instead of very fun use… Lively The concert was very lively.“

I mean, if it’s going to suggest using “very” instead of “very” … shrug


Also if I say it's lively, it doesn't imply that it was actually fun for me. So clearly the meaning changes.

> The party was enjoyable.

Instead of fun this has slight implication to me that it was possible to enjoy it, but as if it wasn't fun just naturally. Like you had to actively put in effort to enjoy it.


it's like a very small part of a thesaurus.


Indeed, yet you can't find another word for "very red" in thesaurus :D


Crimson is kinda like very red subjectively.


“instead of very horny” -> There are four suggestions with “very”


Less is usually more. Just leave them out entirely, thank you very much. /s

https://www.forbes.com/sites/katelee/2012/11/30/mark-twain-o...

“Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”

- Mark Twain

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/2913-substitute-damn-every-...

https://www.marktwainproject.org/xtf/view?docId=letters/UCCL...


Did you look at the site? It's not suggestions for replacing the word 'very' with an alternative word, it's suggestions for replacing the word after 'very' with a more intense synonym, so that 'very' can be removed.


I did, it was well done. I’d rather use the dictionary/thesaurus functionality on my OS/software or a dedicated site for that, though. I don’t really like sites like this because they don’t seem authoritative to me, and I don’t really know who runs them or their motives.

Did you read my links? Mark Twain isn’t talking only about the word “very” either.

> I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English—it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them—then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.


I'm the author and I agree with you relying on more authoritative sources when it comes to proper writing. I enjoy coding, pulled this from my list of stupid ideas and implemented it for fun. But apart form that, I sometimes really have difficulty finding some synonyms (English is not my first language). For example, it's hard to find another word for "very red"! So I usually end up asking ChatGPT.


I appreciate that you made it, and I have heard good things from other language learners using LLMs. I think it’s awesome that you made the site! I’m mostly just very particular about my workflow and don’t like to rely on tooling to write. I realize that I may be privileged as a native English speaker also. Please don’t interpret my comments disparagingly, because they say more about my particular use case and quirks than they do about anything you have done here.


No worries, I appreciate your feedback. I would love to turn off the tools and rely on my brain for writing, but the fear of missing something always catches me.


What do you plan to do with the site going forward? It’s a catchy domain name and the execution is pretty simple and straightforward. Maybe you could add a blog for words and substitutions you’ve used, and have a little callout on those words’ pages saying they were featured on blogpost #n: [post title] or something. If you wanted to make an app you probably could add some kind of social features and allow people to make word pairs and vote on them, make some kind of front page showing popular new pairs and even popular word pairs in different languages for language learners? Just throwing some ideas out there.


Never thought it would get any attention :D Not sure what to do with it but I love your ideas. I guess one of the first things is to add crowdsourcing as someone else also mentioned. Though I'm about to get a new client so less time for these projects :(


Sorry, I misread your comment then. I thought you may have interpreted the site as giving suggestions to replace the word 'very' itself (e.g. 'extremely', 'hugely'...) and were suggesting it's better to remove it entirely.


That's some damn fine advice, thank you!


[flagged]


Yep, no prompt sanitization ;)


What?


They crafted a prompt that breaks out of the structure of word suggestions because this webapp is powered by an LLM.




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