what is the grammatical function of "quite?" What is the information content of "quite?" Chris Bertram's post at Crooked Timber, pasted below, considers the possibilities, and lists some of the commons usages of "quite." Quite interesting, indeed!

Quite

Posted by Chris Bertram

I’ve had to check myself several times when writing on CT recently. I’ve been tempted to use the word “quite” as a modifier of words like “good”. The trouble with this is that Americans (and perhaps all other English users outside the UK?) use the word as a modifier also but in a different sense from the way I would naturally do. If an English person is asked what they thought of a film or a play or a restaurant and they reply that it was “quite good”, they are likely to mean that it was good only to a moderate degree. Americans will intend and understand by the same phrase that something was absolutely, wholly or certainly good. If you tell me that my work is “quite good”, I’m likely to understand that as damning with faint praise. But If you are an American you probably meant to compliment me. Just to confuse matters, a British person who says they are “quite sure” does indeed mean that they are absolutely sure. I hope we’ve quite cleared up that misunderstanding.

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