We recall the concept of a linguistic variable and the representation of its values (i.e. linguistic terms) by means of fuzzy sets. In this framework adverbs are represented by fuzzy modifiers, i.e. operators acting on these fuzzy sets. We investigate two important classes of popular fuzzy modifiers. Grounding on results from psycholinguistic research, we discuss their pro’s and contra’s for representing the adverb very. 19.1 Linguistic variables