terribly

Fear has drained out of the word entirely: it simply boosts whatever follows, pleasant or not, as in terribly busy or terribly kind. It is especially at home in the negative. Felicity Cloake writes in the Guardian (2011) that a nut roast is "not terribly decorative", which means not very decorative. Not terribly works as polite understatement, softening a criticism rather than sharpening it.

The sense of manner judges how something was done, and it usually follows the verb: she sang terribly, he did terribly. Before an adjective, the same word is normally read as the intensifier, so position is the quickest guide. Before a past participle, as in terribly managed, either reading is possible, and context has to decide.

Here the adverb keeps the full weight of terrible: a lion's roar that frightens, a presence that overawes. It belongs to literary or dated writing, so in everyday speech it is easily heard as the plain intensifier. Anthony Burgess's Beds in the East (1959) shows how thin that line is: "his senses were terribly alive" means alive to an almost alarming pitch. It is clearest after verbs of sound or appearance.