Did you see that car Larry bought?  It’s awesome!  The upholstery is amazing!

Really?  I mean, it’s just a Chevy.  And the upholstery is just plastic.  How can either of those be awesome or amazing?  Unless, of course, you have an awfully low threshold of “amazing” and “awesome,” or you have a rather pathetic vocabulary.

The births of my children were awe inspiring.  They were events that were so profound, they changed the way I looked at the world.  They were truly awesome.  When compared with that, saying that it is awesome when you get extra French fries just doesn’t seem right.  Seeing a flying saucer land in the mall’s parking lot would be amazing.  Getting a good parking spot... not so much.

The problem, linguistically, is that when you overuse absolute terms it weakens the language.  It’s why “awesome” and “amazing” really don’t mean anything anymore.  Because of that, if something is truly awe-inspiring, unless you want it to seem mundane, then you really can’t say “awesome.”  Ditto with “amazing.” 

And while we’re at it, consider the words “love” and “hate.”  “Love,” no longer becomes a term used solely for the strongest emotion you can imagine, but it becomes a term for anything.  How can you “love” a coat the same as you love your spouse?  Linguistists also warn us that language is how we think.  If we don’t have terms for absolute things, then we cannot think in absolutes.  Maybe the reason why so many people have trouble staying with people they “love” is because that’s not what love means to them.  It means the same thing you do with a coat when it’s worn out.