Allow me to propose a New Year's resolution that will cost you nothing: dump superlatives like "absolutely" and "completely" and encourage others to do likewise. Banish these flabby verbal elaborations from your daily tongue.

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Why? Because English is a beautiful language with vast expressive scope.

And if you start counting, you'll quickly realise that what I'll call "hyperbolisms" are now legion in our conversation even as they undermine the adjectives to which they are breezily attached.

"A hundred percent," I hear you enthuse? Err, quite.

Social media is already a write-off, but broadcast media and politicians - professions paid to use words - are hardly helping. Both groups have heavy influence through the sheer number of people they communicate with. Influence, I say, that comes with a heavy responsibility.

I heard one otherwise articulate MP say on radio the other day that "there absolutely could be other options". Sadly, this fits the iambic pentameter of our speech but means nothing, even if it sounds like it does.

Frequently you'll here people say it is an "absolute honour" to receive this award, or perhaps "I hope, absolutely, to be back in the finals next year". Who knew honour and hope could be so quantified.

We are always being told what the government is "completely focused on" - driving energy prices down, housing affordability, community safety, national security. But which? We're left to conclude it is focused on all of it, all the time. Both "completely" and "focused" are thus rendered meaningless.

For oppositions, it is no longer sufficiently forceful to claim that the government is incompetent, which, let's be clear, is already a serious charge. Instead, it can only be........

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