so = 'absolutely; utterly; such'

[Jonathan Lighter]

While we're on current uses of "so," I should mention "That is so
wrong!" meaning "That is terribly offensive to the idea of fashion or
good taste or perhaps even common sense."

For ex., a current commercial that says, "Dressing your Pomeranian
like an elf! So  wrong!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bMqLdrzgfk

The vowel in "so" may be elongated or not, but the sentence seems usu.
to get exclamatory stress, as though to indicate that offenses against
fashion and taste are roughly on a par with those against sacrilege
and felony.

I guess I've been noticing it for two or three years.. UrbanD has a
fairly clear one from 2004.

JL

On Fri, Dec 9, 2011 at 12:40 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: so = 'absolutely; utterly; such'
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Preference is one thing, but there are differences in distribution and
> in meaning. "So" is not merely emphatic, but may have a connotation of
> "truly [is]" that "such" does not have--hence JL's "absolutely".
>
> So, "I'm so a drama queen" is not merely "I'm such a drama queen", but
> closer to "I _really_ am such a drama queen". It's almost like a double
> emphasis packed into one. Same with "We're SO busted!"
>
>     VS-)
>
> On 12/9/2011 11:48 AM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>> I think I see JL's point now. When preceding a predicate NP introduced
>> by an article (as opposed to "not..."), new-style "so" might sound
>> odder than usual, in a spot where one might expect emphatic "such"
>> instead: "Today is *such* a cuddle day." Perhaps the
>> microsyntacticians at Yale can figure out if that variety of "so" is
>> less favored than others. Compare:
>>
>> "I am so a drama queen" (1,210 ghits)
>> "I am such a drama queen" (55,600 ghits)
>>
>> --bgz
>
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