the use of the word 'very'

[Liza]

Hi,

Could you please explain me what the grammar explanation behind the correct answers of these website is:

http://www.oup.com/elt/global/products/naturalgrammar/keywords/b_testyourself/ng_test_very/

E.g. Why isn't it correct? : This chicken curry is very delicious.

Why just: 'absolutely delicious' is correct here? (at least according to this website)

thanks a lot.

Liza

[Jamie (K)]

In theory, there's no reason why one can't say "very delicious", and many people commonly say it, although it might sound a little odd to other people. You can also say something is "quite delicious", which sounds a little better than "very delicious". I don't know why the person who wrote that test thought that "absolutely" was possible and "very" was not. If you do a Google search of the exact phrases, you get about 600,000 hits for "very delicious" and about 800,000 for "absolutely delicious". You can even find 12,000 pages that contain both phrases. Most of these appear to have been written by native English speakers, so the test you took poses a great mystery.

[Lost_Soul]

Hi, Jamie
There's a rule in one of my textbooks on English which states:

[Jamie (K)]

[Yankee]

Hi Alex

I'd say that 'rule isn't bad as a guideline for usage tendency. It's not that you can never say something such as "very delicious", but "absolutely delicious" does sound like a more natural and usual choice to me.

However, your "rule" might work even better in the other direction -- i.e. I doubt I would describe someone/something as being absolutely pleased, absolutely big, absolutely tired, absolutely dirty, absolutely wet, absolutely cold, etc.
.