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Komountain Posted 21 years ago
Grammar

very or much

Hi, everyone.

Example: We were (very, much) annoyed by their interruption.

Which one would you choose? Will either one do?

I am tempted to use both without a comma inbetween.
  

Top answer

Hello KM Recently we made a loooooooong discussion on this sort of issue. Please visit Use of Much with Adjectives . paco

  • Hello KM Recently we made a loooooooong discussion on this sort of issue.
  • Please visit Use of Much with Adjectives .
  • paco
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8 Answers
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Hello KM

Recently we made a loooooooong discussion on this sort of issue. Please visit Use of Much with Adjectives.
paco
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Paco2004Hello KM

Recently we made a loooooooong discussion on this sort of issue. Please visit Use of Much with Adjectives.

paco

If you're visiting that thread, Komountain, take some sandwiches and a flask of something...

MrP
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After reading almost half of it, I've reached my own conclusion: stick to my intuition.

Thanks, guys, anyway.
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KomountainI've reached my own conclusion: stick to my intuition.

It seems a sound one.

MrP
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As usual, I did a Google check for that phrase. Here 'All' means all domains and 'GO' means Gutenberg.Org.
'was very annoyed' All/GO=15,300/16
'was much annoyed' All/GO=4,300/203
'was very much annoyed' All/GO=924/166.
Interesting is that the distributions are very contrastive between 'all' (i.e., current speakers) and 'GO' (i.e., writers of cla
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That's interesting.

Where the phrase stands alone (e.g. "I was ADVERB annoyed!"), I would expect 'very' to predominate; where the phrase continues with the instrument (e.g. "I was ADVERB annoyed by the waiter with the pink bowtie"), 'much/greatly/very much'.

MrP
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Hello Mr P

I think your theory is very reasonable. But still there is a tendency that current web users prefer 'be very annoyed' to 'be much annoyed' even in the case 'be annoyed' is used in a passive sense by being followed by a 'by'-phrase.
'was very annoyed by' All/GO=3,160/1
'was much annoyed by' All/GO=607/56
'was very much annoyed by' All/GO=189/16.
Interestingly,
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Yes; "much annoyed (by)" does have a slightly stiff air.

More googles:

"was greatly annoyed by" - 607

"was greatly annoyed" - 975

MrP

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