Summary — "The Amazing Great" (Lexicon Valley, Hosts: Bob Garfield & Mike Vuolo)

Overview

This reunion episode features hosts Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo (with John McWhorter briefly referenced) riffing on the overuse and semantic dilution of superlative adjectives — especially "great," "amazing," and "awesome." Through etymology, historic examples, and humorous banter, they explore why everyday speech has become inflated, what’s lost by adjectivizing powerful nouns, and how this fits into broader attitudes about language change.

Key points & main takeaways

• The hosts coined SLO: Serial Linguistic Overstatement — the conversational habit of routinely using hyperbolic adjectives (e.g., “great,” “amazing,” “awesome”) for mundane things.
• “How are you?” often functions as a polite greeting rather than a literal question; social convention encourages brief, optimistic responses (e.g., “great”), which fuels SLO.
• Etymology of “great”: Old English root meaning to crush into large/coarse pieces (related to grit, grout, groats). Over time it shifted from physical bigness to figurative bigness (importance, magnitude) and eventually to a general positive adjective (“fine,” “splendid”) by the 1800s — a shift noted early by British observers of American English.
• Adjectivizing formerly potent nouns (awe → awesome, wonder → wonderful, amazement → amazing) dilutes the emotional force those nouns could convey. The noun forms (e.g., wonder, amazement) still carry more impact than their adjectival counterparts.
• Lexical change is natural and ongoing (a point attributed to John McWhorter’s viewpoint), even if it’s sometimes jarring to prescriptive instincts (Bob objects to the secondary meaning of “literally,” for instance).

Notable quotes & insights

• “SLO — Serial Linguistic Overstatement.” (Concise label for the phenomenon.)
• “How are you is a greeting, not a... Question.” (Explains social function driving upbeat replies.)
• Merriam‑Webster’s high bar for “amazing”: “amazing, breathtaking, or overwhelming — like traveling the globe in a hot air balloon or visiting the Taj Mahal.” (Used to illustrate mismatch with ordinary usage.)
• “Wonder and amazement pack way more of a punch than wonderful and amazing.” (Key linguistic insight: nouns retain potency.)
• Etymological link: great ↔ grit, grout, groats (shows earlier, concrete meanings).

Topics discussed

• Reunion banter and podcast intro ritual (“Great, great.” / “Splendid.”)
• Polite conversational formulas and their effects on truthfulness/intensity
• Overuse of hyperbole in everyday speech and consumer reviews
• Etymology and semantic shift of “great”
• Historical notes: 19th‑century American usage observed by British travelers
• The adjectivization of powerful nouns and loss of intensity
• Attitudes toward language change and prescriptive vs. descriptive perspectives
• Examples (Trader Joe’s snacks, 19th-century travelogue quote: “She’s the greatest gal in the whole union,” early 1900s short story: “the queen thought they’d done great”)

Action items & recommendations

• Be mindful of SLO: reserve strong adjectives (amazing, awesome, great) for genuinely exceptional cases to preserve their impact.
• Use potent noun forms (wonder, amazement, awe) when you want to convey real intensity rather than defaulting to diluted adjectives.
• When casual social accuracy matters, remember “How are you?” is often a greeting—choose brevity deliberately if you don’t want to overstate or unload.
• Accept that language evolves; if you care about clarity or rhetorical effect, consciously choose words rather than default hyperbole.
• For communicators/writers: prefer specific descriptors over vague superlatives (e.g., “deliciously savory,” “impressively large,” “historically significant”) to communicate precise meaning and avoid inflation.

Short take

The episode is a light, erudite conversation about how everyday language inflates meaning through habitual hyperbole. It combines etymology, social pragmatics, and prescriptive frustration to argue that while linguistic change is natural, intentional word choice can preserve rhetorical power and clarity.