Question from Mural Mahtab in Iran: What are the differences between these adjectives: very, rather, quite, fairly, extremely, terribly? Which one is the strongest? Thanks a million Answer: Hi Mural, thanks for the question. Your question focuses on another rather (or should I say, ‘fairly‘ or ‘quite‘) difficult area of English. Firstly, although these words are often placed in front of a noun or adjective – as in ‘He is a very good student’ – they are not adjectives themselves but are adverbs. To be even more accurate, they are adverbs of degree . They tell us to what extent, or how much, an action happened. Look at these examples using some of the common adverbs of degree that you have included in your question: * It was a very hot day. * Irene is a rather good musician. * Muktar plays the sitar extremely well. * Pablo and Hector are very good friends. * Some northern countries such as Sweden have terribly long winters. You can see that in example 1 we have an adjective ‘...