52 Collocations to Speak with Impact — Using Intensifying Adjectives in English

Hey, it's Annemarie with Speak Confident English.

This is exactly where you want to be every week to get the confidence you want

for your life and work in English. Recently,

I received a great request or question from Serj who said,

"I'm very curious about little words, adjectives,

which are used in collocations for emphasizing emotions like

sheer guts, utter crap,

brand new blatant stupidness." I loved this

question and the examples provided. If you've been following me for a while,

you know that I absolutely love collocations because they are a brilliant

way of learning effective, natural sounding vocabulary.

Now, if you're not sure what collocations are, don't worry.

I'm going to give you a super quick explanation. Plus,

I have multiple lessons on this topic.

Collocations are groups of words, two or more words that go together often;

they sound natural together. They're like words that are best friends.

If you want to get a full overview of what collocations are and why

learning them is such an effective way to grow your vocabulary.

I recommend reviewing my lesson titled Smart Ways to Learn

Vocabulary - 15 Collocations About What You Think. In that lesson,

I provide all the details you need to understand what collocations are and why

you should be learning them. In addition to that lesson,

I also have Confident English lessons on collocations related to progress,

the word say, stay and many more.

I'll include links to all of them in the notes below this video,

but let's get back to this awesome question. In the examples provided,

sheer guts and utter crap, these

collocations are formed using an adjective with a noun.

When I saw those examples using sheer, utter, blatant,

I also thought of the word absolute.

These are wonderful collocations to use to help you speak with

impact when you want to intensify or emphasize something that you're

saying.

So today you're going to learn 52 new collocations to help you

speak with impact using intensifying adjectives.

Alright, in today's lesson, we're going to focus on those four intensifiers:

sheer, blatant, utter, and absolute. With each one,

I'm going to give you multiple collocations that can be used.

And I'll give you some examples of how they're used in sentences as well. Now,

before we get started, there are a lot of collocations here.

52 of them.

I do not want you to try to learn all of them today.

Some of them you'll probably already know.

So you don't have to worry about learning them. You already know them.

But for the ones that are new to you,

I want you to go through this process slowly, be consistent,

be intentional about learning new vocabulary.

I have a full lesson on how to best learn advanced level vocabulary.

I want you to follow that method. If you haven't seen it,

I'll leave a link to it in the notes below this video. It's really important.

If you want to learn and remember vocabulary to

learn it progressively. So today,

as you learn all these new collocations to speak with impact,

I want you to find two or three that you really like,

maybe you like the sound of them or you like what they mean and practice using

them over the next few days.

Find opportunities either in your imagination or in real

conversations to use this collocation that you really like.

As you get more comfortable with it, as you begin to use it easily,

without having to think about it,

then you can go on and find two or three new ones. Again,

follow the method that I talk about in my lesson on how to learn and remember

advanced vocabulary. But now let's go ahead and get started.

And we're going to start with sheer. Sheer means pure,

absolute.

And one of my favorite collocations with this one is sheer joy.

In that picture, she has a look of sheer joy on her face.

Pure joy.

You might also hear someone talk about sheer happiness or sheer

delight.

Super positive language to describe how someone might feel.

You might know someone who has sheer determination or

sheer perseverance, sheer persistence.

For example,

she became the CEO of the company within three years through sheer

determination.

Those are powerful combinations of words and wonderful when you're describing

someone's character. Another positive one, sheer genius.

If someone has a great idea in a business meeting,

a fantastic way to respond is to say that idea is sheer

genius. Let's do one more positive one,

sheer perfection.

Someone could look like sheer perfection or last week my

mom made a dinner that was sheer perfection.

It was unbelievably delicious.

Now that we've got some great positive language,

let's look at some negative examples as well. Sheer desperation.

I called my neighbor at 2:00 AM out of sheer desperation.

Sheer enormity.

The team was overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the problem.

Number seven, sheer panic. Have you ever been in a sheer panic?

Or do you know someone who has ever given up in sheer

frustration?

Or have you been shocked by the sheer number of people who

attended a particular event or party?

You've already got multiple examples of collocations using the

adjective sheer with a noun.

Here are several more that follow that same pattern and can be used

similarly in sentences. Now,

if you want to get this full list so that you can review it easily,

I recommend that you visit my Speak Confident English website,

where I have this lesson available and you can see it in writing as well.

And now let's move on to using the word blatant.

I love the sound of that word. Blatant.

Blatant means complete or obvious. And as you'll see,

it's typically used in a negative way.

Someone might tell a blatant lie, an obvious lie.

For example, her excuse for missing work was a blatant lie.

Number two, with blatant is blatant disregard.

Disregard is the lack of attention or ignoring someone or

something. An example sentence might be,

there is no excuse for such blatant

disregard of the rules. And similar to those two,

we have blatant discrimination,

blatant disrespect,

a blatant violation and blatant racism or

sexism. For example,

the company was accused of blatant discrimination or

his behavior was a blatant violation of our company policy.

All right, there's a lot of negativity with that word, blatant.

Those are great collocations to know and effective to use,

but let's move on to the word.

Utter utter means absolute total or to the

highest degree. And like the word sheer,

this is used with language that is both positive and negative. For example,

utter amazement.

To stare at something beautiful in utter amazement.

If you're someone who practices mindfulness or meditation,

you might appreciate opportunities to sit in utter

stillness or utter silence.

If you've ever lost an opportunity that you really wanted,

you might have felt utter disappointment or even utter

shock that you've lost the opportunity.

Have you ever listened to someone explain something that was so confusing

and so weird, you thought this is utter nonsense?

Once again, just like we had with the word sheer,

there are many more examples where you could use the word utter.

If you want the full list.

I recommend visiting the lesson on the Speak Confident English website so that

you can review it easily.

And now let's move on to our final list for today using the word

absolute.

A fantastic impactful collocation to use in a business meeting

is absolute agreement.

We are in absolute agreement on this issue,

or we're in a hundred percent agreement. When we reviewed the list with utter,

we had utter stillness and utter silence.

We can use absolute there as well.

We could even add absolute solitude. I'm curious,

do you enjoy moments of absolute solitude?

As a language learner,

you might have times when you feel like you are an absolute beginner,

even after many years of studying.

But if you watch this video and you understand most of what I say,

you are definitely not an absolute beginner. Instead,

you might be on your way or aiming toward absolute

mastery or absolute confidence.

The next one on our list is absolute highlight.

I want you to think back to your last vacation,

what was the number one absolute highlight

of your last vacation? Now,

just like with all the other examples we've provided,

we do have some negative collocations as well. For example,

absolute waste. An absolute waste of time.

Or absolute mess. After a vacation,

sometimes I come home and after unpacking my suitcase,

it is an absolute mess,

an absolute disaster in my home. As I mentioned earlier,

there are so many collocations available here.

So if you want the full list of 52 collocations to help you speak

with impact using intensifying adjectives,

visit the online lesson at the Speak Confident English website to get all 52 of

them and review them over time. Again,

if you want my method on how to best learn and remember advanced level

vocabulary, check that lesson out next. Now, before we finish today,

I do want to know what are your two or three

absolute favorite collocations from today's list.

Share your favorites with me in the comments below and try using them in your

own example sentences as well after you do that,

review the other comments.

It's a wonderful way to learn from others in the Confident English community

with that. Thank you so much for joining me.

And I look forward to seeing you next time for your Confident English lesson.