&gt;<i>It&#x27;s a term that has two accepted meanings, the other meaning being the total opposite of the intended, making it a meaningless &quot;flavor&quot; word.</i><p>No, it&#x27;s a term that has two accepted meanings that context makes perfectly clear which one was meant.<p>Like &quot;bad&quot; (which can mean actually bad, or &quot;great&quot; as slang, both meanings in the dictionary). In fact many common terms have that characteristic, including fast (&quot;moving quickly&quot; or &quot;fixed in place&quot;), dust (which also means removing dust), etc. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Auto-antonym" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Auto-antonym</a><p>&gt;<i>Leave it out of phrases from now on, and the phrase will not lose any meaning or clarity.</i><p>It&#x27;s not meant to add to the core meaning of a phrase. It&#x27;s meant to emphasize something in it. Without it the literal (sic) meaning would be the same, but the intended impact of the phrase would be lessened.<p>It&#x27;s like: &quot;I don&#x27;t care for your bonus&quot; and &quot;I don&#x27;t care for your fucking bonus&quot;. The meaning would be the same without the expletive but the intended emphasis and impact lost.<p>Something that Dickens and Shakespeare (who used it that way among tons of others) understood.