12/25/2023 0 Comments Wordfast pro 3 extremely slow![]() And you’d be right again! You are allowed to add an “-ly” to the word “close,” for example. Now, you may also be thinking that you can sometimes stick an “-ly” onto these adjectives that are also adverbs. You would definitely raise eyebrows if you tried to use “longly” or “farly.” You never say, “fastly.” “Long” and “far” also fall into this category. ![]() So “fast” always stays “fast.” You get into the fast lane, and you drive fast if you don’t want to get rear ended. Some of these adjective-adverb-whatever-they-are-thingies never change. Some adjectives and adverbs have the same form, and that’s what a flat adverb is. “Words like ‘far,’ ‘close,’ and ‘tight’ are adjectives!” You’re right, but they can also be adverbs. So go ahead and say, “He kept his cards close” or “Please sit tight.” Can Words Be Both Adjectives and Adverbs? Various style guides give many examples of bona fide flat adverbs. Modern speakers are, however, allowed to say things such as “Drive slow” and “Stay close.” Much as some sticklers would like these sentences to be as incorrect as “violent hot” is today, flat adverbs are real, and you can use them-really. Few modern speakers would utter such statements, and they would be incorrect to do so, as you’re not allowed to chop off any old “-ly.” You couldn’t say, for example, “She dresses real smartly.” It would have to be “really smartly” since the adverb “really” modifies the adverb “smartly.” The word “real” is an adjective. The guide offers charmingly odd-sounding examples such as “…I was horrid angry…,” a 1667 quotation from Samuel Pepys and “…the weather was so violent hot,” from Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719. Merriam-Webster notes that grammarians have been arguing about this kind of adverb for at least a couple of centuries and shares the interesting fact that flat adverbs used to be a lot more common than they are now. Examples include the word “fast” in “Drive fast!” and “bright” in “The moon is shining bright” (2). “Hard” is what’s called a flat adverb, which according to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Modern Usage is “an adverb that has the same form as its related adjective” (1). “Hardly” is one of those regular “-ly” adverbs. You must have heard the joke “Working hard? Or hardly working?” Both versions-“hard” and “hardly”-are adverbs. To confuse matters, adjectives can also end in “-ly.” For example, in the sentence “The lonely wolf howled at the moon,” the adjective “lonely” modifies the noun “wolf.” So you can’t tell if words are adverbs or adjectives just by looking to see if they end in “-ly.” These two letters at the end of a word can be a clue, but you can’t rely on spelling. You might complain, for example, “Sam eats very noisily.” In that sentence, the adverb “very” modifies another adverb, “noisily.” Other adverbs, however, such as “very,” don’t fit this pattern. “Drive slow” isn’t wrong because “slow” is a flat adverb. Such adverbs are usually formed by adding “-ly” to the end of an adjective, as we just did with the adjectives “happy” and “hearty.” Do All Adverbs End in “-Ly”? ![]() Adverbs often have an “-ly” at the end, as in “happily” and “heartily.”Īardvark heartily hoped he would get a turn in the limelight. ![]() Aardvark hoped for equal time to charm her.Īn adverb, on the other hand, modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb.
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