Well has a long history and is found as an intensifier already in older English. It is argued that diachronically well has developed from its etymological meaning (‘in a good way’) on a cline of adverbialization to an intensifier and to a discourse marker. Well is replaced by other intensifiers in the fourteenth century but emerges in new uses in Present-Day English. The changes in frequency and use of the new intensifier are explored on the basis of a twenty-year time gap between the old British National Corpus (1994) and the new Spoken British National Corpus (2014). The results show that well increases in frequency over time and that it spreads to new semantic types of adjectives and participles, and is found above all in predicative structures with a copula. The emergence of a new well and its increase in frequency are also related to social factors such as the age, gender, and social class of the speakers, and the informal character of the conversation.

井有很长的历史，并且已经在较旧的英语中被发现为增强器。有人认为，历时以及从（“的一个好办法”），对adverbialization的一个增强梯度变异其词源意义和语篇标记开发。Well在14世纪被其他增强器所取代，但在现代英语中出现了新用途。在旧的英国国家语料库（1994年）和新的英国不列颠国家语料库（2014年）之间存在二十年的时间间隔的基础上，探讨了新增压器的频率和使用方式的变化。结果表明，以及随时间增加的频率，并传播到形容词和分词的新语义类型，并且最重要的是在带有连词的谓语结构中发现。新井的出现及其频率的增加还与社会因素有关，例如演讲者的年龄，性别和社会阶层，以及谈话的非正式性质。