Monthly Archive for October, 2007

One phrase I constantly hear in the office that drives me absolutely nuts is “super excited.” I think this is a Microsoft-ism (and I feel like it started within the last year and a half or so), although Microsoft isn’t alone in its “super excited” disease (see Steve Jobs, students at Isaac Middle School, some random OJ Simpson fan, and 352,000 others out on the Internets).

It turns out I’m not the only one at Microsoft whose ears hurt when she hears this, but I think that my reasons are different from Dare’s. Dare complains that it sounds like an exaggeration, that everyone at work who is “super excited” about x or y technology or new project can’t actually be sincere. I cringe when I hear this phrase because the speaker sounds unintelligent when he utters it. And the reason he sounds unintelligent is because it’s just plain bad grammar.

If you remember back to elementary school, you probably recall that adjectives modify nouns, and adverbs modify adjectives and verbs. “Excited” is an adjective – it modifies a noun (the noun, in this case, being an effusive and grammatically-challenged public speaker or email author). “Super” is an adjective. In fact, even its status as an adjective is tenuous (the OED classifies super as a noun first and a verb second, and it acknowledges a colloquial adjective form). While some online dictionaries will acknowledge that another common colloquial usage of the word is as an adverb (meaning “very” or “extremely”), the OED makes no mention of this bastardized form.

Bottom line? Don’t say “super excited.” It’s synonymous with “stupid.”