Pretty/quite/rather/fairly

Question

Hi. What is the difference between rather, fairly, pretty and quite in the following example?Thanks.It is pretty/quite/rather/fairly  quiet

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

I see no difference that would be consistently agreed to among native speakers, hrsanei.

Hrsanei · Answer

Thank you very much Mister Micawber for your response.

I will write my own impression about these adverbs, I would be deeply grateful if you could comment on it.

Faily/ pretty means more than a little

quite means very but not very much

rather is like quite but it is used for negative adjectives.

I have heard quite good more that rather good and for tired rather tired sounds better than quite tired.

Quite can be used for both gradable and non gradable adjectives but the other adverbs should be used for non gradable adjectives.

For cold I can say that fairly/pretty cold is less cold than rather cold but I think I cannot say pretty/fairly good is less good than rather good or quite good.

It seems that these adverbs convey the same meaning when they precede good but for other adjectives they might have other meanings.

Thanks

Mister Micawber · Answer

Maybe you won't like my comments, though.

Fairly/ pretty means more than a little -- OK

quite means very but not very much- Sometimes; it also means very much: I am quite tired.

rather is like quite but it is used for negative adjectives.-- What's a negative adjective?

I have heard quite good more that rather good and for tired rather tired sounds better than quite tired.-- They all sound quite (= very) good to me.

Quite can be used for both gradable and non gradable adjectives but the other adverbs should be used for non gradable adjectives.

For cold I can say that fairly/pretty cold is less cold than rather cold -- All 3 sound about the same temperature to me.

but I think I cannot say pretty/fairly good is less good than rather good or quite good. -- Certainly 'quite good' is much 'better' than the others.

It seems that these adverbs convey the same meaning when they precede good but for other adjectives they might have other meanings.-- I don't see a difference between 'good' and 'cold', at least.

Hrsanei · Answer

Thank you Mister Micawber for your explanation.

The following link indicates that rather cold or rather hot is more intense than fairly hot/cold.

(http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/adjectives-non-gradable.htm )

I don't know if the Englishclub is a reliable source or not, I just post it for review to see if its explanation makes sense.

Another thing is that, it indicates that quite can be used for both gradable and non gradable adjectives but with difference in meaning.

below is the excerpt from the above link.

"Quite" with gradable and non-gradable adjectives

The meaning of the adverb "quite" changes according to the type of adjective we use it with:

	adjective	quite =
It's quite warm today.	gradable	fairly, rather
Are you quite certain?	non-gradable	completely, absolutely

As for negative adjectives, I do not know the jargon for that in linguistic, but I mean adjectives such as hungry, tired, bad, etc.

Having checked corpus of contemporary American English, there were 94 results for rather good and 603 for quite good.

At least I think we can come to the conclusion that good collocate better with quite than rather.

I also tried impressive, there were 75 examples for quite impressive and just 28 for rather impressive.

Your opinion about this issue is highly appreciated

Regards

Pretty/quite/rather/fairly

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