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Person 1: "I hope I answered all your questions."

Person 2: "Yes, you did, very well so."

Is the "very well so" grammatically correct? What about formality?

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    The 'so' doesn't belong there at all. What's your justification for it?
    – DoneWithThis.
    Commented Sep 18, 2023 at 7:02
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    It seems like an odd amalgam of "very well" and "quite so". I can't find any backing for this usage, all hits are phrases like "very well so far" etc.
    – Maciej Stachowski
    Commented Sep 18, 2023 at 15:09
  • @MaciejStachowski Astralbee is right, I was confusing it with "very much so" which is used commonly. Although I'm not sure why one works and the other doesn't, grammatically speaking.
    – WalksB
    Commented Sep 18, 2023 at 20:28
  • "Yes, you did so, very well" would be correct.
    – Peter
    Commented Sep 19, 2023 at 6:00
  • Or "...very well too" - would also work. The word "so" (in Britain) seems to me to be creeping into the speech of a lot of people as a kind of filler. (There is a more technical word than "filler" that linguistics people use, but I can't think what it is.) For example, I find that if I ask directions or an explanation of younger people, they will often start with the word "So..." It is quite foreign to anyone who has been around as many decades as I have.
    – WS2
    Commented Sep 25, 2023 at 11:46

2 Answers 2

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"Very well so" is not idiomatic. You are possibly confusing it with the idiomatic "very much so", which is an emphatic way of answering a question to which the answer could simply be "yes".

You could use "very much so" in response to the question in your example which might perhaps mean that the questions were answered thoroughly. Or, you could instead say "yes, you answered them very well" which might better describe the manner in which they were answered.

"Very much so" can sound semi-formal but it would not be out of place in informal speech - it is a common phrase used by native speakers in all kinds of settings.

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  • You are right. I was confusing it with "very much so". The intention was to describe that the answers were thorough AND delivered well. But why isn't "very well so" idiomatic when "very much so" is? Is it an exception made for "much" in that context but not for other adverbs?
    – WalksB
    Commented Sep 18, 2023 at 20:24
  • @WalksB Honestly, I couldn't say with authority, but it may have to do with whether something is quantifiable or not. "Very much" can describe a quantity, amount, or degree of something. "Very well" describes the quality or completeness of something, but not a quantity. We also say "*all the more so", 'more' also being an adverb of quantity, or amount.
    – Astralbee
    Commented Sep 18, 2023 at 21:28
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"Very well so" is grammatically wrong. You can say: "Yes,you did so,very well" or "Yes,you did it,very well" or "Yes,you did that,very well" or "Yes,you did it,very much so" or "Yes,you did that,very much so" or "Yes,you did so,very much so".

The phrase "very much so" is a formal idiom."Very much so" means "very,very much."

I found in EnglishCLUB 1 the following:

Very much so: This is a formal way of saying "Yes, very much".

Examples:

  • -Do you like your new job, Alex?
    -Yes, very much so.

  • -Did you enjoy your holiday in Monaco, Vivien?
    -Very much so. It was delightful.

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    I think very well in your answer is different from the OP usage. In the OP it doesn't mean yes, it means completely or excellently. (Perhaps this is made harder to see because of the comma before the phrase.)
    – Peter Kirkpatrick
    Commented Sep 18, 2023 at 13:02
  • That you did so very well works doesn't mean *you did, very well so does - I agree with Astralbee's answer on this. The only way this arrangement of words works for me is interpreting it as yes, you did, very well, so - yes, you did, alright, anyway, conveying a very different tone than OP intended.
    – Maciej Stachowski
    Commented Sep 19, 2023 at 7:41
  • @MariosAthanasiou I believe mentions don't work (don't show up in the inbox) unless a person posted or commented under that specific post. You can make a comment on Astralbee's answer if you disagree with it and ask for clarifications there.
    – Maciej Stachowski
    Commented Sep 19, 2023 at 8:55

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