The word doing the sorting

Listen to how people describe someone who has moved to their city from another country in the region.

She is very Egyptian about deadlines. He is very Gulf in how he negotiates. She is very Lebanese, you will see.

Take the extra word away and most of these sentences fall apart, which tells you what the word was doing. It was not adding precision. Nobody measured anything. It was drawing a line, with the speaker on one side and the person described on the other, and inviting the listener to stand with the speaker.

The same habit appears in praise, where it is mostly harmless and mostly empty. A dish is very good. A host is very generous. The word is reaching for emphasis and landing on filler. If something was genuinely remarkable, a sharper word would carry it, or a plain one said with conviction. Generous, said slowly and meant, does more than very generous rushed out on the way to the next sentence.

But in front of a difference, the lazy amplifier stops being lazy. It turns a trait into a costume and a person into an example of a type. Often it is not even true. The newcomer is punctual. The negotiator is perfectly ordinary. The adjective was only there so everyone could agree that she is not one of us.

So two small habits are worth keeping. When the word is in front of a compliment, find a better one or trust the compliment on its own. When it is in front of a label, ask why the label is there at all, and most of the time remove both.

Careless words still carry a message. Usually it is the one we would not say out loud.