英语语法中的增强器（源自拉丁语，表示“伸展”或“意图”，也称为助推器或扩音器）强调另一个词或短语的词。强化形容词修饰名词；强化副词通常修饰动词、可分级形容词和其他副词。强化词的对立面是降调词，它减少了对它所修饰的词或短语的强调。

增强器示例

"Oh, I am so not in the mood for this. I've just been shot!"—Nicki Aycox as Meg Masters in "Supernatural" "The woodwind has a slightly greater scope than the violin."—John Philip Sousa "The women I had as very close friends were very independent women, very progressive. They're very sensitive about social change."—Toni Morrison

增强器的功能

"To some degree, an intensifier acts as a signal: it announces that the word following it is worn out and that it should be understood as inadequate. For example, in the phrase an utterly beautiful night, the author is saying, 'Look, I mean something beyond beautiful, even if I don't have the precise word; try to imagine it..."—From "Spunk & Bite: A Writer's Guide to Punchier, More Engaging Language & Style" by Arthur Plotnik

通用副词

"Intensifiers are morphologically perhaps the most versatile category of adverbs in English. A glance at their history would appear to support the layering hypothesis. There are intensifiers that may be called fused forms, such as the suffixless very and compound somewhat, which both go back to Late Middle English, whereas the phrasal expressions sort of and kind of are more recent."—From "Three Perspectives on Grammaticalization" by Terttu Nevalainen

助推器与语言变化

"Humans are indeed natural-born exaggerators, and this trait is one of the main driving forces behind language change. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the constant renewal of intensifying words, or what are sometimes called 'boosters.' These are the little words that fortify adjectives. They express a high point along a scale. Something isn't just good but awfully good, terribly good or even bloody good. Inevitably, such dramatic words wear out with time and become mundane. Alternative expressions then have to be found. This has already happened to boosters like awfully, terribly and horribly. You can see that at the root of these expressions are words like awe (originally, 'fear, dread'), terror and horror. So they had strong, even gruesome beginnings. But overuse bleached them of this energy and force, and before long they meant little more than 'very.'"—From "Gift of the Gob: Morsels of English Language History" by Kate Burridge

重复增强器

"The sheer number of [intensifiers], all with more or less the same meaning, is significant. If you haven't made your case, you have to pound the adverbial drums, the same way the boy in the story had to insist that this time, there really, really, really was a wolf."—From "When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It" by Ben Yagoda

斯特伦克和怀特在增强器上

"Rather, very, little, pretty—these are the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words. The constant use of the adjective little (except to indicate size) is particularly debilitating; we should all try to do a little better, we should all be very watchful of this rule, for it is a rather important one and we are pretty sure to violate it now and then."

威廉·科比特论夸张副词（1818）

"Be rather sparing than liberal in the use of Adjectives. One which expresses your meaning is better than two, which can, at best, do no more than express it, while the additional one may possibly do harm. But the error most common in the use of Adjectives is the endeavoring to strengthen the Adjective by putting an adverb before it, and which adverb conveys the notion that the quality or property expressed by the Adjective admits of degrees: as 'very honest, extremely just.' A man may be wiser than another wise man; an act may be more wicked than another wicked act; but a man cannot be more honest than another; every man who is not honest must be dishonest, and every act which is not just must be unjust."

资料来源：

• 亚瑟·普洛特尼克：《勇气与咬：更具吸引力的语言与风格的朋克作家指南》，兰登书屋，2005年
• 内瓦莱宁，特图。汉斯·林德奎斯特（Hans Lindquist）和克里斯蒂安·梅尔（Christian Mair）主编的《英语语法化的语料库方法》中的“语法化的三个视角”。约翰·本贾明斯，2004年
• 《戈布的礼物：英语语言历史的点滴》，澳大利亚哈珀柯林斯出版社，2011年
• 本·雅戈达，“当你抓住一个形容词，就把它杀了。”百老汇图书，2007年
• 小斯特伦克,威廉,；《风格的要素》，皮尔森，1999年（1918年首次出版）
• 威廉·科贝特：《一系列字母中的英语语法》，1818年