word choice - When and how did "pretty" enter English as an intensifying adverb?


Today I saw an idiomatic road sign: "Pretty Muddy". I found this lack of strict English on a road sign unusual (on par with my "Dead Slow" official speed limit sign in Leeds, pic below), but as it turned out it's a charity race and the signs were merely directions.


This got me thinking however, how do words like "pretty" and "dead" as intensifying adverbs end up in English? Taking "pretty" as an example, when did this first appear?


traffic sign saying


I wonder how fast you have to be going before they stop you. How would this hold up in court?



Answer



The OED’s earliest citations for the word as an adjective are from the Old English period, when it meant ‘cunning, crafty’ and subsequently ‘clever, skilful, able’. It was only in the fifteenth century that it came to have meanings associated with pleasing appearance.


The earliest citation for its use as an adverb meaning ‘to a considerable extent; fairly, moderately; rather, quite’ is from 1565.


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