In an article about a malfunctioning space probe the author mentions that the probe is tumbling “ever so slowly”. That phrasing, “ever so x” really stood out to me as extremely quaint, something that I’d imagine being uttered only by a pre-teen girl in a Victorian England period story or possibly Winnie the Pooh. Is this a phrase still in common use and I’m ever so out of touch? Another Britishism?
Certainly understood here in the UK, if not perhaps in such common use these days.
It might have a bit of a subtext as an oxymoron, as in ‘Ooh, he’s ever so clever, isn’t he?’
A variant might be: ‘I wouldn’t do something like that, not for ever so’.
Two countries divided by a common language… 
The oxymoron I’m reminded of is “ever so slightly”.
It doesn’t seem very old fashioned to me in the US. But I am middle aged.
I don’t think I would expect to see it in formal writing, but in general, it doesn’t strike me as obscure or dated.
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like…
It seems to me a bit precious in most contexts. Net of canned idioms / aphorisms like @TriPolar just delivered.
Stuff in space can do things that aren’t common experiences on land. Like droning along in their orbit but rotating at 1/2 revolution per hour about some axis. That’s “ever so slowly” compared to any other hurtling object in a layperson’s experience.
The preciousness of “ever so …” adds piquancy to the bland engineering description.
Those aren’t oxymorons, they’re perfectly self-consistent expressions which might (or might not) be meant ironically.
As for the “ever so …” construction itself, it sounds quaint to modern ears, so lends itself to humour and irony though it can certainly be used in a straightforward way, but wouldn’t normally be considered good style in modern writing unless one was trying to evoke a particular tone or era.
My first thought on reading the phrasing was Alice in Wonderland, but it is used only five times in The Annotated Alice.
I intended to post this, so all I can add is that English is full of intensifiers. “Ever so” is a slightly formalized version of “very.”
Mine was Vicki Valentine from The Simpsons.
Self-tapping shoes?! I’m ever so pissed!
I remember Hermione using the phrase in an early scene of the first Harry Potter book, so I just assumed it was a bit of a general Britishism.
I suppose the word is just used as an intensifier. Like ‘plus’ in Newspeak.
Which we will all be speaking soon when our New Overlords achieve their goals. Heil… ?
The last word to be erased will be ‘crimethink’, because the language must not have any word that allows the concept to exist.
I think it’s more common in British English than in American English, but appears in both, and is mostly archaic in both, although it might still be considered a more formal version of “very” in British English when spoken in polite society.
I’ve just done some searching on this. The online dictionaries that I checked said that it isn’t particularly American or British. When I checked Google Ngram, I got a picture of its uses like Google Ngram Viewer: ever so . Notice that the use of “ever so” went down from 1811 to 1978. The use of “ever so” has gone up since then.
I think that’s correct. It probably has a slight connotation of ‘upper class’ accent (Oxford / Cambridge etc), but is a bit archaic and something your old maiden aunt would be likely to say…
I use it unironically, occasionally; maybe in contexts like:
“I might be imagining this, but it tastes ever so slightly of liquorice”
“the adjustment is really sensitive, so I’ll turn it ever so slowly clockwise”
So usually in some diminutive sense - ever so slowly/slightly/faintly/gently etc, but I suppose sometimes also in other ways, and also also occasionally in sarcastic or ironic ways.
I was adding a link to my original post and the edit didn’t post.
Recent occurrences ofEver so
Other way round. “Ever so” was decidedly not classy; it was a marker of lower class or middle-clas speech, used where an upper-class speaker would say “very” or “awfully”. It turns up in Betjeman’s How to Get On in Society, a satirical catalogue of idioms and references that were considered common in the decidedly upper-class circles in which he moved.
Although the phrase is British English, my understanding is it is generally used by grannies or to express sarcasm.