Dear Geist, Where do you stand on superheated words? I mean proactive replacing active, incredibly replacing very, etc. Is it natural to jack up perfectly good words? —Janice, Cyberspace Dear Janice, In a word (ha ha), yes. Like any living thing, language changes constantly. Both of your examples have caught on because writers and speakers of English felt they were needed. Proactive is a more precise opposite of reactive and gives a stronger sense of being prepared ahead of time than active. Things that used to be interesting are now amazing. And incredibly added more force to adjectives than the quieter very–perhaps in order to be heard over the high-speed cacophony of the Internet. We're sadder about the new function of incredibly than the advent of proactive, because when incredibly is used in place of “very very VERY,” its actual meaning—“unbelievable”—is bound to be weakened, or lost. —The Editors
