Adverbs: forms

Adverbs have a strong connection with adjectives. Adjectives and adverbs are usually based on the same word. Adverbs often have the form of an adjective + -ly.

Adverbs ending in -ly are usually adverbs of manner (slowly) and degree (completely, fairly).

Adverbs formed from adjectives ending in -l have double l:

beautiful → beautifully, careful → carefully, hopeful → hopefully, historical → historically

Magda looked hopefully at her mother.

Historically, there was never any conflict between the two communities.

Adverbs formed from adjectives ending in -y change the y to i:

easy → easily, busy → busily, lucky → luckily, angry → angrily

Luckily, I had a backup copy of the data on a disk.

I’ve never seen him react so angrily.

Adverbs ending in a consonant +e keep the e:

definite → definitely, fortunate → fortunately, extreme → extremely, absolute → absolutely

I am extremely grateful to you.

We were absolutely exhausted at the end of it all.

There is a small group of adverbs which end in -ward(s) or -wise. The -ward(s) words can end in either -ward or -wards (inward, inwards).

1. -wards: inwards, eastwards, upwards, downwards

2. -wise: clockwise, lengthwise, likewise

The doctor asked her to move her head upwards but she couldn’t.

Turn the handle clockwise to start it.

He’s the one that they all love. Whatever he does, they do likewise. (They do the same thing.)

Some adverbs have the same form as adjectives. The most common are: fast (not fastly), left, hard, outside, right, straight, late, well, and time words such as daily, weekly, monthly, yearly.

Some adjectives end in -ly, e.g. lively, lonely, ugly. We don’t form adverbs from these adjectives because they are not easy to pronounce. We usually reword what we want to say instead.

Don’t act in a silly way.

Not: Don’t act sillily.

She said it in a friendly way.

Not: She said it friendlily.

Some adverbs (e.g. just, quite, so, soon, too, very) are not directly related to adjectives:

This is just what I am looking for. (just = exactly)

These cups are not quite the same. (not quite = not exactly)

Why is this road so narrow?

I look forward to seeing you soon.

That’s too expensive.

That’s a very strange story.

Most adverbs, like most adjectives, are gradable (they can express different degrees of qualities, properties, states, conditions and relations). We can modify adverbs using other types of adverbs and comparative forms to make longer adverb phrases.