In this article I describe the semantic and syntactic development of the moderator rather from Old to Present-day English using a variationist approach. Rather originates in an Old English comparative adverb indicating speed, and hence time, but the loss of the indication of speed and movement can already be traced in the Old English period. In Middle English the ‘preferential’ senses of rather (e.g. the type ‘I would rather do X than Y’) become more common than the temporal senses. This contrastive meaning constitutes the unmarked use of rather in Early Modern English, but it gradually weakens in the course of the Modern English period. The moderator use becomes popular in the second half of the eighteenth century. The semantic development outlined above goes hand in hand with a syntactic development from an original adjunct into a subjunct and conjunct, and finally into a modifier of adjectives and adverbs.

This article presents a synchronic quantitative study of the intensifier system in Toronto, the largest urban centre in Canada. The data comprise nearly 10,000 adjectival heads, as in I was so hungry and I was getting really nauseous (TOR/2m). The distribution of intensifiers in apparent time provides startling evidence of change. Very is quickly moving out of favour and really has expanded dramatically. Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that other intensifiers are on the rise – so and pretty. Testing a series of contextual factors known to operate in the development of intensifiers (e.g. adjective function and type) as well as their intersection with social factors (e.g. age and sex) reveals evidence of ongoing delexicalization, but not as part of a continual longitudinal process. Instead, the profile of change reveals recycling, suggesting that the mechanisms of intensifier renewal may be more complex than previously thought.