“He is speaking French quite well” means he speaks it better than “He speaks French well”. Quite acts an intensifier.
It is nasty out vs it is quite nasty out. The second version is more nasty out.
She is lovely vs she is quite lovely. The second means she is lovelier.
That’s my American English experience, at least.
FWIW, this American English speaker agrees with the above.
I’ll third Ivory’s post for another American perspective. In my dialect, though, “quite” is only infrequently used outside the stock phrase “not quite”.
Really? Not for me. Especially your first example – “he speaks French quite well” definitely means, for me, that he isn’t (quite) fluent, whereas “he speaks French well” probably means he *is *fluent.
Just to take a random example, here’s the OP from another current SDMB thread:
“Anyone [know] of a lost film that was re-discovered and the condition was like new?”
That means the film is in 100% mint condition, full stop. No room for ambiguity. But if you say:
“Anyone [know] of a lost film that was re-discovered and the condition was quite like new?”
To me, this means the film is in *a little less *than mint condition. 99%, maybe. At least, it allows for that possibility.
As another American chiming in, I agree with the others. Someone who speaks French “quite well” speaks it better than someone who speaks it just “well.”
To me, the “quite” adds nothing to this sentence. First, it would sound weird to me.
Second, It would not occur to me that there was any meaningful difference between “like new” and “quite like new.”
Well, “new” is an end point, so you can’t get newer. The part being intensified is how “like” new something is.
“Like new” is close to being new, but not mint/new
“Quite like new” is closer to being new/mint, than simply “like new”.
I’ve never heard this construction in the positive. “Wasn’t quite like new” sounds idiomatic to me.
You’re gonna be very disappointed if you come to England and go see a film someone said was ‘Quite good’.
In my experience, there’s no perfect pattern to whether ‘quite’ means ‘almost’ or ‘extremely’, it’s half in the inflection and context. Someone with a big grin saying “I’m quite happy” means something very different from the guy who shrugs and says “Yeah, I’m quite happy, I guess.”
To be fair, with the background level of sarcasm in the UK, that’s not much different from any other positive/negative phrasing.
Huh. Okey dokey. Maybe the difference is that I’m hearing (in my mind) “quite X” being said with a certain INTONATION – a slight hesitation, a bit of doubt in the tone, maybe a slight head bobble with a tight-lipped, downturned mouth. “He speaks French quite well…” – left unsaid, but understood, is the follow-up: “…but not like a native,” or, “…considering he only had three years of high school instruction.”
ETA: Ninja’d! 
As I said, this is my American English experience and I was replying to someone else describing his American usage. It wouldn’t surprise or disappoint me that other cultures do it differently.
It does, or did, happen in Devon and Cornwall. The first time I was down that way–Falmouth, or maybe Truro–I asked a woman in the street for directions to wherever it was I was going. Along with the directions, she called me “my bird,” “my bride,” “my darling,” with every sentence. All very odd to the ears of an American girl, but I’ve never forgotten it.
True. Maybe this is one reason I tend to think “*not *(quite) fully X” when I hear “quite X” – because it’s used more often in the negative than in the positive.
For me, the positive use can mildly evoke a caricature of Victorian English speech – perhaps thanks to Commander McBragg of the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show(jump to 1:25).
That’s what I was going to suggest, that it’s just ingrained, reflexive sarcasm. They’re using for it’s opposite meaning, so “quite good” = “not good.” That makes sense especially if the intonation is so important. It’s a sarcastic usage.
Not “opposite,” just “qualified.” It doesn’t imply not good, but it can imply pretty good, but could be better.
I don’t think I have seen this. The British (maybe just in London or even in North London, I’m not exactly sure) use the word “geezer” in a way that does not make sense to me. It seems to vaguely mean “dude who I don’t particularly respect but is in a traditional position of respect” but I’m not even sure that is right.
It clearly does not mean “extremely old and feeble” which is what I would expect it to mean because it seems to be applied to people outside the context of age.
When reading or listening to Premier League commentary I’ll frequently hear/see managers, refs, team captains, star players, commentators contemporary age group friends, random people on the street, be referred to as “this geezer” and after 7 years of following the sport I still can’t quite figure it out.
I’ve always heard the UK usage of the word to be something like the way we use the word “dude” here in the US. ETA: Although, looking it up, it seems there’s also a meaning that connotes a sense of eccentricity, too.
As I understand it, a British “geezer” is just a guy–not especially an old one, as he would be to Americans.
To this American, “geezer” definitely implies advanced age, but does not imply anything at all about frailty. You can have a tottering old geezer or a tough old geezer. And in the case of “tough old geezer”, there’s definitely an undertone of respect.
Maybe frail is wrong. But to me geezer conjures images of Mr Burns or Lionel Barrymore in It’s A Wonderful Life.
I wouldn’t refer to LeBron James as a geezer the way I saw Messi described after the tax scandal.
American waitresses of a certain age will call their customers “honey” or “sweetie”.