ADJECTIVES
• POSITIVE
amazing / beautiful / best / big league / brilliant / elegant / fabulous / fantastic / fine / good / great / happy / honest / incredible / nice / outstanding / phenomenal / powerful / sophisticated / special / strong / successful / top / tremendous / unbelievable
NEGATIVE
boring / complete and total / crooked / disgusting / dishonest / dopey / dumb / goofy / horrible / interesting* / not good / obsolete / out of control / overrated / pathetic / ridiculous / rude / sad / scary / stupid / terrible / unfair / weak / worst
*as a synonym for suspicious
• EXTREME
big / huge / major / many / massive / numerous / staggering / substantial / tough / vast
Usage note: These may be spoken once, twice (“major, major”), or three times (“many, many, many”).
ADVERBS
absolutely / badly / basically / certainly / extremely / frankly / greatly / highly / incredibly / totally / truly / unbelievably / very / viciously / way
NEGATIVE NOUNS
candy* / chaos / choker / clown / disaster / dope / dummy / fool / hatred / idiocy / incompetence / joke / lightweight / loser / lowlife / moron / phonies / problem / terror / weakness
*as a synonym for cheap or widely distributed commodities, such as illegal drugs and leaked intelligence
NONSTANDARD INCLUSION OF THE DEFINITE ARTICLE
• the African Americans
• the blacks
• the cyber
• the Latinos
• the women
VAGUE SOURCE ATTRIBUTION
GENERAL
- A lot of people are saying …
- People think it’s going to happen.
- Everybody’s talking about it.
- They are saying …
- Everyone is now saying …
PERSONAL
- That’s just what I had heard.
- I’ve heard that …
- What I’ve heard …
- I’ve been hearing …
- A lot of people tell me …
- “I’ve seen this, and I’ve sort of witnessed it—in fact, in two cases I have actually witnessed it.”
SPECIAL PHRASES
- believe me
- by the way
- doesn’t have a clue
- getting away with murder
- hit a home run
- hit me harder
- I have many, many friends
- I must tell you
- I won
- I’m a believer in
- I’m doing very well with
- in all fairness
- in the whole world
- laughing at us
- likes of which
- never seen before, ever
- not gonna happen
- … okay?
- … right?
- that I can tell you
- they don’t respect us
- to be perfectly honest
- very much involved
- zippo
QUICK REPETITION OF WORDS AND PHRASES
- “He’s a low-energy person, let’s face it. We don’t need low energy. We need lots of energy.”
- “I mean, we defend everybody. We defend everybody. No matter who it is, we defend everybody. We’re defending the world.”
- “The children are aspiring to grow up to be terrorists. They are taught to grow up to be terrorists … They have to stop the teaching of children to aspire to grow up as terrorists.”
- “You cannot just have a standard. You cannot just say that we have a blanket standard all over the world … you can’t have a blanket standard. You may say … it sounds nice to say, ‘I have a blanket standard; here’s what it is’ … But you know … it won’t be a blanket standard.”
- “We were the big bully, but we were not smartly led. And we were the big bully who was the big stupid bully.”
