Apparently it's official. At some point over the past decade, the word absolutely replaced yes in American English as the most common way of expressing affirmation--at least in the world of politics.

Recently, when Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes asked Senator Barack Obama if his campaign had touched "people's imaginations," the reply was, "Absolutely."

Speaking with equal confidence last week was Hillary Rodham Clinton. Asked if she would stump for other candidates, the New York senator said, "Absolutely."

And absolutely is unquestionably bipartisan. When asked if Arizona's plan to finance campaigns through public funding "could become a model for the nation," Senator John McCain replied, "Absolutely."

Similarly, when Scott Pelley asked George W. Bush if instability in Iraq threatened the whole region, the president answered, "Absolutely. No question in my mind. And I know this is hard for some Americans to understand."

Semantically speaking, what's a little hard to understand is how a four-syllable adverb could ever supplant the monosyllabic yes (or, in my old neighborhood, yeah).

In an era of truthiness, perhaps a simple "yes" or "no" is now viewed with suspicion. "Yes" might be understood to mean "probably" or even "maybe." So a longer word has been called up to heighten the intensity of the response and magnify the self-assuredness of the speaker.

Or maybe not. The fussbudgets on the Usage Panel of The American Heritage Dictionary have never warmed to the notion of absolutely as an intensive yes.

We'd prefer to leave absolutely to the politicians and the lexicographers. The only thing we're fairly confident about is our new page on Building Sentences with Absolute Phrases. Also known as absolute clauses--and as absolutes. Yes, indeed.