"So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women - and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. It also won’t do in your essays." -- The Dead Poets Society
Great movie but not the best advice - "morose" doesn't even mean "very sad", it means ill-tempered/in a bad mood. I wouldn't even say there is one good word that means "very sad", but "morose" is definitely not it. The site in question came up with "inconsolable", but that's hardly appropriate if you're talking about "very sad news" (after a few attempts it come back with "somber" which at least sort of works in that case, though I'd still struggle to imagine myself telling a friend that their divorce was "sombre news").
I think that's the point -- "very sad" is unpoetical because it doesn't convey anything more than "sad", which is itself a generic word. If you're writing poetry or fiction you want to be describing emotional states more interesting than "sad".
The important corollary here is that not all language needs to be poetical. It's OK to use generic language in a lot of situations. Sometimes "I'm very sorry to hear that ____" is the tool for the social situation.
I mean, the goal wasn't to sound "authentic", it was to avoid sounding "lazy" while trying to "woo women", which is the only situation considered relevant in the supposedly-inspiring speech by the maybe-a-bit-creepy professor.
Not meant to school or lecture anyone, but ‘morose’ stems from the Latin ‘mora’, meaning ‘delay', something slow. Examples from Latin.: _mora solvendi_ (delay in paying), _compensatio morae_ (compensation for the delay).
I believe that the original meaning is lost [or warped at least] when it becomes synonymous with bleak, cheerless, chill, Cimmerian, cloudy, cold, depressing...
But since it means ‘slow’ it also relates to blue, dejected, depressed, despondent, down, droopy, hangdog, inconsolable, low, melancholic[0].
And "telephone" comes from roots meaning "sound at a distance" or "far away sound". That doesn't make it right to say you heard the "telephone of laughter" when you meant to say the "distant sound of laughter" .
Sometimes you're deliberately trying to be inoffensive and formal, in which case claiming you're morose makes you look like a clown.
Compare "I was sad to hear about your grandmother" or "I was very sad..." with "I was morose..." or "I was inconsolable..." When it really matters, you need to drop the pretensions from your writing and just be normal.
Heartbroken is a particular type of sadness though, and again, doesn't apply to non-living occurrences (like "news" or "excuses" or "movies"). You'd probably have to use "pathetic" for "excuse", but a "pathetic movie" means something quite different...
I think it was Mencken that most popularly called this sort of thing sophomoric, and chastised "schoolma'ams" trying to impart conscious thought and logic into the unthinking that don't much care for what it is they're doing (e.g. writing, composing music, etc.).
I think using "very lazy" is quite fine. If you're not just simply lazy, but much more so -- yet fall short of *exceptionally* lazy: you are very lazy.
The same with very tired. If I'm exhausted, I will simply use exhausted. But if I don't feel exhausted, but simply very tired, then I feel I would be acting "puerile"[0] in trying to exaggerate my emotions to be something more than they really are. If I am exhausted, then I feel that I urgently need rest immediately; and if I'm tired, then perhaps I could do with some rest, but it can always wait; but then if I'm very tired, perhaps it means I'm somewhere between urgently needing rest and within my ability to put off rest? Some sort of in-between state? But how can that be: needing now or not needing rest now is binary -- there isn't any notable in-between there, like the cliche of "you're either pregnant or not" (but perhaps that too breaks down depending on our exactness of the definition of "pregnant." Is pregnancy determined as the exact moment the egg is fertilized or only when a woman's urine, a short time later, contains an elevated level of hCG?). In that case, then we could do away with "very tired." And if for some normal reason another person were to have different personal definitions for what they feel is their "tired" and "exhausted," then this would be reopened again, and we'd have to start again into another discussion.
I cannot find a fitting end to this carb-fueled rant. I've become self-conscious of all of the "technique" English teachers beat into me, and I really don't like it, and don't want to keep on writing. Run-on sentences: "cannot ever ever use those." Transition words: "they must be used liberally." Punctuation: "there is an agreed upon set of rules on how and when they should and shan't be used." Passive vs. active voice, prepositional placement, cliches, etc. "If you don't follow these rules and techniques, then you are simply a fool! We will learn you write good! Mark Twain's stylistic choices be damned."
I find I cannot enjoy writing, when the spectres of pedagogues long past haunt me at every sentence; and I am spending more and more time having to unlearn what was taught to me in school.
It's also important to note that this type of substitution is very context-dependent. A very tired person may be exhausted, but a very tired joke is definitely not.
Since we're being pedantic, I'd point out that pulchritudinous is only used for people of great physical beauty, it's not a generic replacement for beautiful.
This also seems to reflect the debate on agglutinative vs. isolating languages, or at least languages with more words vs. less words. One style is great for creative prose and philosophy, the other is practical for real world communication with those with varying skill levels.
See Lojban for a very practical and clear language, which only allows you to create words packed with too much meaning when you are constructing metaphors using rafsi forms.
