A funny yet interesting experiment was carried out by Professor

John Trinkaus, who is known for dedicating his academic life to

the scientific observation of ordinary people going about their

everyday lives.

In his study “The Demise of Yes”, he plotted the

verbal trends in providing an affirmative response to an

inquiry. Of the 419 questions analysed, ‘yes’ was only used 53

times, whereas ‘exactly’ was the affirmation used 117 times, and

‘absolutely’ appeared 249 times.