Today it's used mostly to emphasize the gravity of a crime, trading on the term's aura of religious finality.
Robert Kenny, a spokesman for the Health Department, said state officials sought to emphasize the gravity of the safety lapses by the hospital in White Plains, imposing the maximum fine allowed under state law, or $2,000 per safety violation.
Singing "A Love Like Ours," a song first popularized by Barbra Streisand, Ms. Carroll emphasized the gravity of the phrase, "When love like ours arrives/We guard it with our lives," whose words (by Alan and Marilyn Bergman) are not to be taken lightly.
The new figures "emphasize the gravity of the situation," says microbiologist David Blehert of the USGS in Madison.
As Semino (2008: 100) observes, the use of the WAR metaphor "tends to dramatize the opposition between different participants in politics," to "emphasize the gravity and urgency of the problem in question, and the seriousness of the effort that is being made to solve it".
But that emphasizes the problem.
emphasizes the connections between us.
