Words I hate no76: Quite

Words I hate: no 76
Quite.

I heard this once.
"It was quite good"
"Yes but it wasn't quite good enough"
"Well, quite"

Say the word slowly and you won't believe the shapes your face has to
make, it looks like an obvious come-on to the invisible tart. You also
won't believe the sound of the thing.
QUITE, it sounds like the noise a well bred duck might make. If you say
it often enough you start to question if you're actually doing it
right.
Do all of the above alone or you will suffer the kind of distasteful
pity from passers-by you never thought would come your way.
What does it mean?
I won't look it up, I just won't. No. Oh no matey boy. Oh no sireebob a
loo bop (she's my baby). Not on your Furtado Sonny Jim and why? Because
then it will have won. Then it will finally be up there in the ranks of
"dictionary words". Words that never get said in public for fear of
being deserted so fast that you yearn for a bit of distasteful pity
just to prove you exist.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against long or uncommon words.
People who are afraid of them will use four short ones and still not
get the correct emphasis or meaning. I refer to the "call my bluff"
words that have to be looked up to be believed and that caused the
great 'Droylsden Scrabble Massacre' of 1756 (soon renamed upon the
discovery that scrabble hadn't been invented as the great 'Droylsden
Massacre About The Word Quozjax' of 1756)
The problem is that we all use 'Quite' all the time. It gets used and
abused more often than Dierdrie
Rasheed-Barlow-Baldwin-Barlow-Cuthbert-Dibble and Grub. (No.77:
"Dierdrie", I don't even know how it's spelt, say it several times
slowly you start to wonder whether you actually speak English at all,
still, at least it's a name, I think).
Firstly there's "Quite good". This is a two word phrase and yet it has
two totally opposite meanings to different people:
"I thought it was quite good" (almost good)
"Really? I thought it was quite good" (almost very good)
To some it means almost. What they actually mean is 'not quite' which
in itself is so totally confusing as to produce a small yellowy
discharge in the corners of my eyes just thinking about it. If 'quite'
means 'almost', then 'not quite' must mean 'actually' but it doesn't,
what it means is 'almost almost'.
When you are seventeen and eleven months you're not quite old enough to
drink. Then, on your eighteenth birthday you become old enough. What
happened to quite old enough? One moment you're not something, the next
you're out the other side of it without ever passing through. As it
happens you don't become quite old enough until you're in your forties
and you say to the landlord, "I'm quite old enough to drink thank you,
I am forty seven you know".
If you don't quite understand something, does it mean you understand it
more than someone who just doesn't understand it? Or does it mean you
DO understand it but not as well as you might?
To some it means very. If a performance is quite brilliant you mean it
was more than brilliant, it was 'very brilliant'. Some extremely posh
people, the kind that hum and nod when you're making a point so keenly
you think they're desperately trying to tell you that their lips have
healed up and they're about to suffocate, have even taken to using it
twice to elevate it out of our vocabulary and into theirs. "Oh the
composer was quite, quite brilliant" they say. To me that means almost
almost almost brilliant which means, well, fairly mediocre really. Not
that good at all in fact. I could do as well from the couch with half a
bread stick while the dog flukes the theme tune to Jaws by scratching
it's arse on a banjo.
Finally there are those people, and Hugh Grant is a perfect example,
who just say it at the end of a conversation. Not connected to anything
whatsoever.
"You do realize, Hugh, that Liz is going to hit the roof when she reads
this?"
"Quite"
WHAT DO YOU MEAN?
"Exactly"?&;#8230;. "Well, there you are then"?&;#8230;.
"Ditto"?&;#8230;. "Oh fucking Jesus Christ o'Reilley Blimey Charlie
it was never this complicated in the fun filled showers of
Oxbridge!"?
These people are just masking their inability to respond with anything
constructive by trying to sound insightful and well bred. It sounds a
lot better than "Duhh" and if you just nod then there's an empty space
in the conversation when all that can be heard is the groaning of your
wallet and there's a real danger of poor people butting in. [I'm
thinking of getting a fish for the other shoulder to balance things up
(ed)].
In conclusion there doesn't seem to be a meaning of Quite. It's just a
word of convenience, it's a scapegoat to avoid having a definite view
or committing to anything. It's only real value is in scrabble but if
someone uses it then demand that they define it (unless they're from
Droylsden) but if they try to look it up
STOP THEM.