It's long been a standard example in GSish semantics [Update: John Lawler emailed a proposal for a solution: But this dimension of meaning seems to be completely (though perhaps not absolutely or definitely?) missing from the dictionary definitions. This all has something to do with what absolutely and definitely mean, and how their meaning interacts with the meanings of other words. Details by Google (in all the tables in this post, the words heading the colums precede the words or word sequences labelling the rows: thus the first entry in the second row gives 289,000 as the count returned for the query ): I don't see any way predict from these entries that writers on the web are 198 times more likely to "absolutely adore" something than to "definitely adore" it, while they are 97 times more likely to "definitely prefer" something than to "absolutely prefer" it. Encarta defines absolutely as "totally", and definitely as "certainly finally and unchangeably exactly clearly absolutely".
The OED gives "Without doubt or condition" as the basic (relevant) sense of absolutely, and "In a definite manner determinately, precisely" as the meaning of definitely. Merriam-Webster's unabridged (3rd edition) says that definitely means "distinctly, unmistakably, positively" while absolutely means "independently, unconditionally, entirely, positively". The AHD doesn't give definitely a separate entry, but (the relevant sense of) definite is given as as "Indisputable certain". Here's an example: a systematic difference between absolutely and definitely that is missed by all the English dictionaries I've checked.Īccording to the American Heritage Dictionary, absolutely means "Definitely and and completely unquestionably". I'm a big fan of dictionaries, but sometimes they let you down badly.
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