AbstractThis article provides a detailed description of the syntactic and semantic properties of the degree termbienin Spanish, which appears in expressions such asun jugador bien alto, and proposes a novel analysis that captures those properties. We propose thatbienis a degree operator that is generated as a Deg head and binds the degree argument of a gradable adjective by means of an evaluative predicate we label GOOD. We define a “good degree” as one that evaluates a property with respect to a comparison class that exceeds a prototypical or expected standard.Un jugador bien altois a player that is tall in a way that exceeds a prototypical or expected way of being tall for a player. It is argued that such an analysis not only accounts for the mixed set of properties thatbienhas, which overlap with certain degree modifiers, elatives and exclamatives, but does so in terms of a manner component (the predicate GOOD), which is part of the lexical meaning thatbienhas maintained in its evolution from manner adverb to degree term.