What Is an Oxymoron?
1. Awfully Good
Beginning sentences with “awfully” to use it as a positive intensifier is largely a British English colloquialism, but it is sometimes used in other English variants. Of course, in examples such as the above, the word “awfully” actually translates as “very,” causing the term to mean “very good.”
The English language can be very nuanced at times, and the Brits in particular are well known for their eccentricity and the rules are not always consistent. In many cases, the word “awfully” will actually be used as it was originally intended to be. For example, food that was “awfully prepared” means that a terrible job was done of the preparation.
