XXV - GRAMMAR Recognising adverbs

RECOGNISING ADVERBS

You can’t always tell by the look of a word that it’s an adverb. You can recognise it as an adverb only by the work it does in a sentence. A word may be an adverb in one sentence and a different part of speech in another sentence. For example:

The job went well.
Here ‘well’ describes the verb ‘went’, so it’s an adverb.

The well was drained by morning.
Here ‘well’ names something, so it’s a noun.

The well water tasted disgusting.
Here well is being used to name a type of water, so it’s not describing a verb and is not an adverb here.

When you see -ly on the end of a word it’s a good clue that it’s an adverb. Many adverbs are made by adding -ly to the end of adjectives. For example:

‘careful’ (adjective) becomes ‘carefully’ (adverb)
Sunita is very careful with her money. She spends her money carefully.

However, lots of other adverbs are irregular.

Beware! Some words ending in -ly are never used as adverbs: eg friendly, lovely, lonely.

Also look out for adverbs that have the same form as adjectives.
‘Hard’ and ‘early’ are both adjectives (used to describe people, places and things) and adverbs (used to tell us more about the verb):

It’s still early. (adjective)
We arrived early. (adverb)
He works very hard. (adverb)
He’s a hard man to know. (adjective)

Other adverbs with the same form as adjectives are far, fast, high, low, late and long.