General Characteristic

The adverb is a word denoting circumstances or characteristics which attend or modify an action, state, or quality. It may also intensify a quality or a characteristic.

According to the meaning adverbs fall into many groups: adverbs of place, adverbs of time, adverbs of degree and adverbs of manner. The latter are used to describe the manner in which the action is performed. They modify verbs.

Note 1: Adverbs are not used to modify link verbs like look, taste, smell, feel, sound. They are followed by adjectives only. Examples are:

• What does she look like? - She is very pretty.
• This coffee tastes too bitter.
• Dinner smells good.
• The band sounds good.

I. Formation

1) Many adverbs of manner and some adverbs of degree are formed by adding –ly to the corresponding adjective: careful- carefully, etc.

2) The adjectives ending in –ly cannot be used as adverbs and have no adverb form. To supply this deficiency we use a similar adverb or an adverbial phrase: likely (adj.) – probably (adv.), friendly (adj.) – in a friendly way (adv. phrase).

3) Some adverbs are identical in form with adjectives: back, early, far, fast, hard, high, late, long, near, right, short, still, straight, wrong, well. Examples are:

• The train went fast.
• They worked hard.
• She went straight home.
• He led us wrong.

4) Some adjectives have a narrower meaning than their corresponding adjectives or differ from them. Examples are:

• He greeted me coldly. (in an unfriendly manner)
• I miss you badly. (very much)

Note 2: Remember the difference in the meaning of the following pairs of adverbs:

Form	Meaning/Use	Example
direct   directly	without stopping anywhere on the way	They flew direct to Rome.
immediately, straight	Come directly you hear my whistle. She looked directly at us.
free freely	without paying	We got into the cinema free.
without any restriction	He comes and goes freely.
hard   hardly	with effort or force	I tried hard to remember where I had parked the car.
almost not	It was hardly raining earlier.
late   lately	not at the agreed time	She’s always arriving 10 minutes late!
recently	Have you seen Barbara lately?
near   nearly	at or to a short distance away   a short time away in the future	A bomb exploded somewhere near. His retirement was drawing near.
very close to; almost	David was nearly asleep.
short     shortly	measuring a small distance from end to end small in height	The bed was too short for him.   He is short and tubby.
in a short time; soon   abruptly, sharply, or curtly	The flight was hijacked shortly after take-off. ‘Do you like cricket?’ ‘I do not,’ she said shortly.
high highly	a long way up	He can jump high.
very favourably	I think highly of you.
close closely	a short distance away	The hotel is close to the sea.
carefully, paying attention to detail similar	He looked again more closely at the marks. I hope I have translated closely enough.

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