“He can do this even while doing that.”
Or
“He can do this while doing that.”
Isn’t “even” unnececcary? It feels kind of like saying “not nothing” vs. just “nothing”. Which is correct?
I think the “even” implies that the tasks would normally be considered mutually exclusive or exceedingly difficult.
“He can play chess while listening to music.”
vs.
“He can play chess even while doing his taxes.”
I agree that the “even” emphasizes the improbability of the concurrent events.
“He can eat dinner with his wife while watching the football on TV.”
vs.
“He can have sex with his wife even while watching the football on TV.”
Yeah, they have two different shades of meaning. The one without “even” is just a mere statement of fact. The one with “even” is used as an intensifier that suggests what follows is unexpected/difficult/paradoxical/etc. It’s probably the most usual use of the word “even” as an adverb.
Following up on pulykamell, who nails it. Intensifiers are extremely common in everyday language. (Was that “extremely” really needed to modify common? No, but you’ll see that and similar formations constantly.)
Intensifiers do not have to make logical sense. Unique means the one and only. It logically cannot take a modifier. Yet people instinctively feel that unique has lost its punch, and you’ll see “very unique,” “quite unique,” and dozens of other intensifiers on it. Pedants hate this, but pedants don’t understand the living language. People look to include shades of meaning that regular definitions don’t offer and that either have no good substitute or are only available through unusual words they may not know. Therefore they get creative with the vocabulary they have. This is bottom-up brilliance, not a dumbing down of the language. Pedants should be cheering this to the skies, but their voices get muffled because their heads are up their asses.
That’s fucking right.
Profanity is the best example of intensifiers.
Start with:
That’s William Allen White, probably the originator of this advice, although it’s been attributed to all and sundry.
“Very” might very well be a very weak word and very often it is very much better for formal prose to strike the word. But notice the advice to substitute “damn.” That comes from a particular male oral tradition, in which all emotion is expressed by the intensity, frequency, and multiplicity of profanity modifying any noun. If “damn weak” is acceptable and perfectly well understood in speech, then “very weak” should be equally acceptable and understood in written language.
My favorite example of an intensifier busting loose and soloing is hell. “It’s hot as hell” is a perfectly logical intensifier, because hell in Christian mythology is the hottest place of all. At some point “as hell” got cut off and turned into a colorful way of saying “very.” You get mad as hell, dumb as hell, old as hell, and sure as hell. Of course, some wit had to put a spin on it and created “cold as hell.” That’s common, and understood, and totally illogical. Once “as hell” started roaming free, all hell broke out. Eventually it became hella, a vogue intensifier that could be used as an adjective, hella good, or just a strong word of agreement, similar to “fuckin’ a.”
Fucking deserves a book of its own. And fucking gotten them.
One chapter could be about how it’s about the only infix in English, as in abso-fucking-lutley (Some languages have more infixes than prefixes or suffixes).
(The other one being -smurf-, as in I’m absosmurfly positive.).
There’s more: freaking, bloody, goddamn, bloomin’, motherfucking, etc.
Point of order: unique and other superlatives commonly took modifiers without anyone so much as batting an eye until some grammarian in the 1800s took issue with it. Me, I’ve had no truck with it ever since my high school english teacher made me write “more nearly perfect” and thus sound like the stuffiest stuffed shirt in the city, when the pre-fucking-amble to the US constitution says “to form a more perfect union”.
Ntipick: The use of perfect in the preamble means “complete.” The intention was to signal that the joining of the states in this federal union was more complete, farther along a line of unity, than had been true under the Articles of Confederation. Whether pedants would insist that only one possible state of completeness exists, that would be true, if ever, only using particular meanings. One can easily envision a scale of completeness - the tasks are 90% complete - and therefore a scale of perfectness. We’ve lost this sense since 1787 but that doesn’t change its use or meaning then.
And a scale of uniqueness. No matter what you do, pedants are going to pedant. If “more perfect” or “more complete” are acceptable, so should “more unique.”
The Oxforddictionariessite has this usage statement:
There are usages I accept but don’t personally use, and very unique is one of them. This isn’t prescriptivist hypocrisy; I won’t fault you for doing so. It’s the difference between pedantry and the American Heritage usage panel. When the descriptivist Webster’s Third appeared in 1961, the conservatives at American Heritage wanted to refute it by laying down standards and turned to a panel of over 100 noted writers to rule on usage. There were shocked to their back teeth when the results came in and they learned that no two writers had the same list of acceptances, and every single usage had at least some defenders. That killed prescriptivism overnight, except among a small group of unlearned idiots who started issuing decrees irregardless. (Yes, that was deliberate.) If good writers today use it (not to mention the long history of good writers doing so) then you only needed to decide whether you were in a situation requiring such formal precision that you couldn’t use ordinary English. There are some; but they were rare then and much rarer today. Almost completely unique in a kinda sorta way.
Blah blah blah handwaving.