An issue that crops up often in both written and conversational English concerns an area that many seem to have difficulty with: When to use an adjective versus an adverb. This issue is prevalent enough to warrant a two-part post.

• The problem manifests itself in situations where the speaker doesn’t know whether to use the “-ly” form of a word.

The key to solving this is to understand the difference between adverbs and adjectives.

Let’s look at the respective definitions as they appear in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary as a starting point. The end of the quoted material is denoted by the “∎.” These definitions have been edited for length and content.

From M-W:

adjective 

noun

plural -s 

1 :  a word belonging to one of the major form classes in any of a great many languages, typically used as a modifier of a noun to denote a quality of the thing named (as brave in “a brave man” or “the man is brave,” new in “the new dress” or “the dress is new”), to indicate its quantity or extent (as five in “five cows,” every in “every word”).

adverb 

noun

plural -s 

1 :  a word belonging to one of the major form classes in any of a great many languages typically used as a modifier of a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a preposition, a phrase, a clause, or a sentence and typically expressing some relation of manner or quality (as well in “she sings well,” surprisingly in “surprisingly slow”), place (as here in “sit here”), time (as now in “now under consideration”), degree (as too in “too hastily,” rather in “rather near us”), number (as triply in “triply bound”), cause (as therefore in “therefore the statement is true”), opposition (as however in “if however this proves impossible”), affirmation (as certainly in “he certainly did”), or denial (as not in “he did not”), sometimes having degrees of comparison expressed by affixation (as soon, sooner, soonest), suppletion (as well, better, best), or periphrasis (as happily, more happily, most happily) but otherwise uninflected, and frequently formed with a characteristic derivative affix (as –ward, –wards in “homeward”, “homewards”, –wise in “clockwise”, and –ly in “aptly”), this last being especially frequent since it is the principal means of forming adverbs from adjectives. 

∎

Pay particular attention to the last part of the adverb definition:

and –ly in “aptly”), this last being especially frequent since it is the principal means of forming adverbs from adjectives.

• This is the area that people find most troubling.

Let’s break these definitions down:

• Adjectives modify nouns and pronouns

• Adverbs modify words or groups of words other than nouns. 

A key tip-off is that the English prefix “ad” means “to, toward,” which comes from Latin, and that the word “verb” is right in the word (so in adverbs what is being said is “going to” the verb.

This is helpful because the most common usage of adverbs we see is when they modify verbs. In Part 2 we’ll look at some rules to help understand the differences between adverbs and adjectives.

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