our earlier discussion of quite on CT [crooked timber] back in December:

Quite

Posted by Chris Bertram

I’ve had to check myself several times when writing on CT recently. I’ve been tempted to use the word “quite” as a modifier of words like “good”. The trouble with this is that Americans (and perhaps all other English users outside the UK?) use the word as a modifier also but in a different sense from the way I would naturally do. If an English person is asked what they thought of a film or a play or a restaurant and they reply that it was “quite good”, they are likely to mean that it was good only to a moderate degree. Americans will intend and understand by the same phrase that something was absolutely, wholly or certainly good. If you tell me that my work is “quite good”, I’m likely to understand that as damning with faint praise. ok so just tends to be used flatly ~ ironically - its literal fxn still is as an intensifier. no? is it actually comparable to them saying your work is "somewhat good" ? ie literally faint praise. But If you are an American you probably meant to compliment me. Just to confuse matters, a British person who says they are “quite sure” does indeed mean that they are absolutely sure. I hope we’ve quite cleared up that misunderstanding.

cmmts:

-Things would be much simpler if we followed my suggestion and simply banned all Americans from reading CT. --dsquared
-Quite so. --
-Aww, don’t ban us from reading CT. I’d miss y’all’s posts; some of them are quite good.--reuben
-Post about cricket and football; we’ll go away. funny.
-But is that really how Americans use ‘quite’? I had always had the impression that the word, in American mouths, was not quite a superlative at all. Very mild damnation with not-too-faint praise, if you like. A thing is ‘quite good’; that is to say, it’s really rather good; not, perhaps, absolutely first-water, no; not the Platonic ideal; not stop-in-your-tracks good; not the dog’s bollocks altogether; but don’t look downhearted, it is still quite good for all that. Have I been wrong in this all along? Perhaps an American reader will set me straight, if Daniel hasn’t scared them all away. Mrs Tilton
- As for the meaning of “quite good” it sounds like someone is surprised that something was good. sure that's often true -
-My impression is that we Americans often use “quite” to mean “more so than you think.” So if I tell you a movie was “quite good,” I mean that I thought it was better than you seem to expect me to have thought. ah well done.
-Growing up in the American south, I think I rarely if ever used “quite”; it sounded too affected. Now that I live in the UK, though, I use it all the time, but – just to make things complicated – not in the faintly damning (or dampening) British sense. Instead, I use it to mean more than “pretty” but less than “pretty damn”. Thus (working our way up), “Liverpool is good. Charlton seems quite good. Chelsea is pretty damn good. And Arsenal will win the treble.” reuben
-Reuben: Now you need to get the hang of the plural for sports teams – Chelsea are pretty damn good. keith
-Keith It would make my life quite a bit simpler if someone could give me a rule for when the plural is used. Is it only for sports teams? Can only the plural be used for sports teams? Is the plural used for organisations, eg Oxfam? I’m probably showing my lack of gray matter here, but in making the transition from American English to Brit, this is the most vexing difference I’ve encountered. There seem to be know set rules for when plural is used versus singular. Cheers reuben I want to move to England! cheers!
-I believe that the subject is considered plural when it represents an aggregate of people. Hence, the sports team and a company are both plural. (in a press release, you’ll see Microsoft are releasing …). burner wack. isn't the aggregate itself a single entity? well actually no not real as people are. so that's better. we're talkin about the people. a multitude of them. Microsoft are doing this. yes. they. are.

-And ‘quite the thing’, though getting a little archaic, is also approbative. Consider it a vestige of the BritEnglish tendency for both irony and understatement. ok. again, then, you're saying it tends to be used sarcastically? right? not that it de-intensifies the adjective? but one cld argue that this distinction isn't one. anyway I'd have tht 'quite the thing' comparable to 'hits the spot.' ie, good. oh wait approbative. that does mean good. approving. righto. just tricky bcs there's a word similiar to 'approbation' that means disapproval, isn't there? similar at least, in starting with an a? maybe not.

-So do Brits have a completely different interpretation of what the song “Mellow Yellow” is saying? what it's saying - hee. That is, is he the fellow quite rightly mellow?

I'm just mad about Saffron
Saffron's mad about me
I'm just mad about Saffron
She's just mad about me

They call me mellow yellow
(Quite rightly)
They call me mellow yellow
(Quite rightly)
They call me mellow yellow

I'm just mad about Fourteen
Fourteen's mad about me
I'm just mad about Fourteen
She's just mad about me