At 08:11 AM 2/23/06 -0800, H. Muth wrote: >I have come to this fountain of knowledge to ask about 'ly', as in really, >badly, etc. Is there a rule for when a word has ly on the end? > >So often I hear people say 'he did real bad' which I know is incorrect, but >so is 'really bad', isn't it? Is the correct term 'really badly'? > >"That went by quick(ly)?" > >What is the rule for 'ly'?
You use -ly to make an adverb out of an adjective. Life gets complicated because not all adverbs were made out of adjectives, and some words are both adjectives and adverbs (and may be nouns and verbs as well). Not to mention that there is often a subtle difference in meaning between "word" and "wordly". (Cf. "sick" and "sickly", both adjectives, but "sickly" can also be an adverb -- though it tends to mean "while feeling sick" more often than "in a sick manner".) (Except when it's modifying an adjective: "his face was a sickly yellow".) "Wordly" reminds me that there are also adjectives that were made by adding -ly to nouns: "with all my worldly goods I thee endow", "his cowardly act", "her womanly charms" . . . I think that here, "-ly" is a shortened form of "-like". Mostly. There is one rule that always holds: if you tack an -ly onto an adjective in a predicate, the resulting word modifies the *verb* in the sentence. Thus the often cited: "I feel bad about it." -- it makes me sad "I feel badly about it." I am pawing around it with mittens on. Then you get into the little idiomatic things -- the adverb form of "good" is "well" -- if you add -ly to "good", you get another adjective which means not good, but large: "He was paid a goodly sum." And if you feel well, you aren't feeling in a good manner, you are feeling *healthy*. But if you write well, you are writing in a good manner -- and you can feel good, but you can't write good. (You can, on the other hand, write "good" on a report.) Long live confusion! -- Joy Beeson http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/ http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/ http://n3f.home.comcast.net/ -- Writers' Exchange west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A. where the winter is even more confusing than the language. To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
