This chapter provides an inventory of maximizer types and tokens attested in the data. Altogether 23 maximizers, covering both full and zero forms, were included in the study, totalling 9,488 relevant tokens; the four top-frequency items comprise perfectly, too, most and entirely. The diachronic distribution of the top seven maximizers across the period studied is discussed, with comparisons made between usage in the Late Modern English and the modern BNC trials data. The maximizers prove to be the only category of intensifiers increasing across the period studied; boosters and downtoners show declining rates of use. The semantic input domains of the maximizers are discussed, and the targets of intensification and the collocational features in usage patterns presented. Maximizers mainly modify adjectives and less so adverbs and verbs. Within the category of maximized adjectives, the category of Human Propensity dominates; within the maximized category of verbs, the material process types cover most of the uses. Finally, the collocates and semantic prosodies of the top seven maximizers are described, with attention paid to the situation-specific and relatively fixed uses.

The boosters found in the Old Bailey Corpus (1720–1913) are documented in this chapter, with regard to their overall frequency distributions and usage patterns. This includes an overview of the entire inventory of 44 types and 47,613 tokens, which makes it the largest intensifier group in the data. Very is found to dominate the data, followed by far less frequent so and greatly as well as many fairly low-frequency items. Semantically, boosters are subdivided into originally quantitative (denoting amount: greatly, extent: widely) and qualitative types (e.g., denoting truth: very, perception: strikingly or evaluation: badly). Formally, the two most frequent types are unmarked adverbs (very, so); two other boosters prefer the suffixless form to a large extent (great, wide). The targets modified by boosters are mostly adjectives, followed by adverbs, while verbs and prepositional phrases are rare.

This chapter is devoted to downtoners, namely moderators, diminishers and minimizers, with the 19 attested types amounting to 7,874 examples. The dominant type a little constitutes 66 per cent of the occurrences and is followed by hardly with 13 per cent. The distribution of the five most frequent downtoners across the period studied is discussed, and compared to the BNC trials data. The decline in the use of diminisher a little accounts for the overall decline in the use of downtoners in the OBC data. The source terms of downtoners display a more varied spectrum of semantic shades than maximizers and boosters. There is also a greater variety of target categories than attested for boosters and maximizers: the otherwise most frequent targets adjectives are here outranked by prepositional phrases and verbs, with the latter standing out as the specialty of downtoners compared to all other intensifiers. They predominantly modify verbs of the material and mental process types; in the semantic classes of downtoned adjectives, the category of human propensity dominates. As for collocational profiles, for instance a little dominates in collocations with after, before and more.