Skip to main content
English Language Learners

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

Required fields*

10
  • 2
    In OP's specific context, that's immediacy in the slightly more metaphoric "spatial" sense of being nearby (as in the immediate neighborhood). As opposed to what I would see as more "literal" (temporal) use of very in something like At the very moment the golfer hit the ball, one of the onlookers sneezed and put him off his shot (emphatically at that exact time, not at that exact place). Commented Jul 31, 2017 at 14:24
  • 11
    Why do you think spatial metaphoric and temporal literal? That's the very question. Commented Jul 31, 2017 at 14:26
  • 2
    As a non-native, I'm with @FumbleFingers here. I would replace the word "immediacy" with "vicinity" or "proximity". I've never heard the word "immediacy" before, and I would have guessed it has a temporal meaning, not a spatial one. Commented Jul 31, 2017 at 17:38
  • 8
    But spatial nearness or vicinity, @Fabio Turati, is not the meaning of "before your very eyes". Nor is it a temporal immediacy. It is another kind of immediacy. Also, your first action should be to look the word up in a good dictionary, not to tell me that I've chosen the wrong word. Commented Jul 31, 2017 at 17:53
  • 1
    I would say the immediacy is that of possession as in intimacy. Commented Jul 31, 2017 at 18:22