Meaning
In New England informal speech, wicked can act as an intensifier meaning very or extremely.
How it is used
As a regional intensifier, wicked most canonically raises the degree of an adjective or description: wicked good, wicked cold, wicked smart, wicked long. Yale's Grammatical Diversity Project also documents some verb and restricted noun-related uses, but ordinary direct quantity modification is much less free than with New York mad. Mad people can naturally mean many people in the New York pattern; wicked people normally does not work as a parallel New England quantity construction.
Examples
- “That game was wicked close.”
- “It's wicked cold outside today.”
- “The line got wicked long after lunch.”
Pronunciation
/ˈwɪkɪd/ · WIK-id
Tone and register
Informal, expressive, and strongly recognizable as New England speech. The regional association is strongest in eastern New England, but individual speakers vary and the form is understandable well beyond the region.
Visitor guidance
Visitors can understand wicked as roughly very or extremely in its regional use. The safest grammatical pattern is wicked plus an adjective or degree expression, such as wicked cold or wicked smart. Do not mechanically substitute wicked anywhere another regional intensifier appears; New York mad, for example, has a broader direct quantity use before ordinary nouns.
Cultural context
The intensifier is a compact example of how an ordinary English word can acquire a strong regional identity without changing spelling. Yale survey data identifies New England as the clearest geographic center of the construction, while historical dictionary evidence shows that intensifying wicked itself has older precedents and should not be tied simplistically to one New England historical event.
Origin
Intensifying wicked has older precedents, but Merriam-Webster notes that its strong modern New England association and expansion are especially tied to late-twentieth-century usage. Maperla does not connect the form directly to the Salem witch trials.
Places represented
Open the reviewed place guide for each regional sense carried by this canonical entry.
Comparisons featuring this term
Open reviewed place comparisons that explicitly use this canonical term in their editorial comparison set.