English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Instead of using massively in the following sentence, what else can I use?
I am massively running out of time now!
I have tried "terribly", "horribly", "incredibly", "unbelievably", and "almost". The first words seem strange to me because this is the first time I have heard of them. The two later are fine since I heard native people use them before. But still, I would like to know your opinions over how they are correctly used both in writing and speaking cases.
I'd say "I am rapidly running out of time" - it's more accurate and descriptive IMHO since it expresses speed and motion, which is what the sentence is trying to convey.
Don't just assume everything you hear native speakers saying is good grammar. This example is nearly nonsense. The adverb massively doesn't go together with running out of something. You could be "quickly running out of time" or have an "urgant need for more time". You could also have a "massive amount of work to do in a small amount of time".
"Massively" here can have the meaning here of 'to a great degree.' It can also have the meaning of completely, totally.
Thus, in your example, it would mean that the fellow speaking was running out of time to a great degree, or, he that was very, very late.
Or, applying the second meaning, it could mean that the fellow speaking was totally, absolutely late.
But, I think the first definition applies better to this case.
