Can you say "absolutely good"?

Solution 1:

In informal speech the word absolutely is often used to add emphasis to a superlative. You could just as easily say, "It was fantastic," as, "It was absolutely fantastic," but both really mean the same thing.

Adding it to words like good doesn't have the same requirement for emphasis, as there is a superlative you could use instead, so you would rather write, "brilliant," than, "absolutely good."

Solution 2:

Absolute(ly) is an interesting predicate; it has a semantic restriction to polar extremes.

That is, it can modify a noun phrase, verb phrase, clause, or adjunct that represents some extreme end of a scale. For instance, consider the temperature terms scale, from frozen to boiling water:

• frozen/freezing ~ cold ~ cool ~ lukewarm/tepid ~ warm ~ hot ~ boiling/roasting

Absolutely just won't work with the terms in the middle;:

• *The water is absolutely tepid now.
• *My coffee is absolutely cool now.
• *The weather is absolutely warm today.

But it's fine with terms at the endpoints, even in metaphoric use:

• We're absolutely roasting in here.
• I'm absolutely frozen.

(Note also what the phrase Absolute Zero means)

An interesting effect of this is that absolute(ly) can be used to differentiate certain kinds of meaning because of this restriction.

The English adjective mad has two different meanings -- it can be, and most often is, used in the sense of 'angry', with a human experiencer subject and a temporary emotional sense.

But mad can also mean 'insane', especially in metaphors like "mad/crazy about". This sense also has a human experiencer subject and can occur in many of the same constructions as emotional mad, so -- since it's important not to confuse anger with insanity, to say the least -- one can apply the absolute test.

• Mary is absolutely mad about you.
• *Mary is absolutely mad at you.

The use of absolutely here distinguishes the two senses, independently of the prepositions; language is full of redundancies like that. Linguists are always looking for phenomena that can act as indicators for other phenomena, like staining slides.