The use of the expression "very fun"

[Darryl]

It seems to me that the expression "very fun" has become a part of English usage. I find it difficult to use the expression, simply because it appears to use an adverb, 'very', to describe a noun 'fun'. Yet, I hear the expression used almost daily by people who should know better. Is this becoming the equivalent of the use of 'ain't'? Or...am I incorrect? Please explain. Thank you.

[susiedqq]

Yes, it seems redundant . . .but it is being used.

I hear also hear "very excellent", nowadays. Ugh!

Sample:

For a very fun day with the family, go to the water park.

I doubt you will ever see "very fun" in literature or correct English writing. More like teenage slang.

[RonBee]

Originally Posted by susiedqq

For a very fun day with the family, go to the water park.

The word "fun" in that sentence is clearly an adjective. Nonetheless, it is hard for me to see how "very" adds anything.

[Soup]

Originally Posted by RonBee

The word "fun" in that sentence is clearly an adjective. Nonetheless, it is hard for me to see how "very" adds anything.

There's also the more colloquial funner.

[louhevly]

Originally Posted by Darryl

It seems to me that the expression "very fun" has become a part of English usage. I find it difficult to use the expression, simply because it appears to use an adverb, 'very', to describe a noun 'fun'. Yet, I hear the expression used almost daily by people who should know better. Is this becoming the equivalent of the use of 'ain't'? Or...am I incorrect? Please explain. Thank you.

"fun" can be an adjective:

I was remembering Marianne and the fun times we have had.
Now let's think of someone fun.

And it seems "fun" is comparable; we can say "Football is more fun than chess".

So I guess "We had a very fun time" is possible. Also I found this riddle:
What is something that it NOT very fun to do naked? Frying food.

[susiedqq]

That joke was not very funny!

[MAGIKKMUSHROOM]

i am not so good for English but,

ONE FRIEND ALWAYS SAYS ME WHEN SOMETHING WAS "STRANGE, SURPRISING or NOT REALLY FUNNY" " ja-ja SO FUNNY "

JUST WAS A CUTE ESPRESSION TO SAY ME: "CAME ON GIRL, DON´T SAY THAT AGAIN PLEASE... YOU´RE LOVELY BUT, THIS IS NOT FUNNY"



m&m

[riverkid]

Originally Posted by Darryl

It seems to me that the expression "very fun" has become a part of English usage. I find it difficult to use the expression, simply because it appears to use an adverb, 'very', to describe a noun 'fun'. Yet, I hear the expression used almost daily by people who should know better. Is this becoming the equivalent of the use of 'ain't'? Or...am I incorrect? Please explain. Thank you.

Language changes, Darryl and the things that sound funny to us may well be as natural as rainwater [... it's not so natural anymore, I guess ]

Did you know that ain't was used by the upper classes a few centuries ago.

Like all prescriptions, the one on ain't ain't accurate. This word started like many other words do in English, naturally.

Ain’t arose toward the end of an eighteenth century period that marked the development of most of the English contracted verb forms such as can’t, don’t, and won’t.

Ain’t - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Attempts to stamp it out have been, as it has been with every prescription ever writ, unsuccessful. Why? Because prescriptivists never have any valid reasons for their notions. They just do the linguistic equivalent of stamping their feet and raising their voices. This, they feel, is the equivalent of proof for their concoctions.

What is natural to language sticks and there's little doubt that ain't has stuck. It's found its niche and in that it's highly successful. Compare it to the more common isn't and we can see that ain't ain't going away.

Results 1 - 10 of about 5,070,000 English pages for "ain't".

Results 1 - 10 of about 23,500,000 English pages for "isn't".

During the nineteenth century, with the rise of prescriptivist usage writers, ain’t fell under attack. The attack came on two fronts: usage writers did not know or pretended not to know what ain’t was a contraction of, and its use was condemned as a vulgarism — a part of speech used by the lower classes.[6] Perhaps partly as a reaction to this trend, the number of situations in which ain’t was used began to expand; ...

Ain’t - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"An't" (and later "ain't") was just one of the crowd for many years, and was used by the upper classes as well as the lower, educated and otherwise. You see it in a lot of late 18th-century and early 19th-century English novels in the mouths of ladies and gentlemen.

The Grammarphobia Blog: Is 'ain't' misbehaving?

[/quote]

Now, whether very fun sticks around or not, for now it's part of the colloquial language for some people and that just ain't gonna change.