[gweinberg]

Isn't this ass-backwards? It seems to me that if exhausted really does just mean the same as "very tired", etc, we should be dumping all these other more intense adjectives. If your purpose in writing is to communicate, then needlessly complicating your speech with uncommon words is a bug, not a feature.

[delluminatus]

The reason this is recommended is in order to improve the specificity of description: "he was very tired" does not tell us as much about him. If you just substituted "very tired" with "exhausted" everywhere, you wouldn't be adhering to the spirit of the substitution, which is all about adding detail. Maybe his manager hates him and he is leaving work, "browbeaten and resigned", or maybe he just didn't sleep last night and he is headed to work, "clouds in his mind and lead in his limbs" or whatever.

[gamblor956]

Agreed. Sometimes you use "very" because the sentence flows better that way. "Very" is a lyrical word and pairs well; many of the replacements (i.e., "exhausted", "sagacious", etc.) aren't. If the text is meant to be spoken aloud, it makes a substantial difference.

[grecy]

I prefer 'double plus tired'.

[jimmaswell]

Reminds me of how I thought those forms in that book weren't really such a bad idea but were presented in such a negative way.

[qbrass]

Imagine the comments section of every website filtered to Newspeak.