adverb

Definition:

The part of speech (or word class) that modifies a verb, adjective, or other adverb. Adjective: adverbial. See also:

• Adverbially Speaking
• The Unfaithful Inaugural Adverb


• Adjunct
• Adverbial
• Adverb Clause
• Conjunctive Adverb
• Degree
• Degree Modifier
• Disjunct
• Downtoner
• Intensifier
• Modifier
• Qualifier
• Sentence Adverb
• What Is a Sentence Adverb?


• Adding Adjectives and Adverbs to the Basic Sentence Unit
• Sentence Building with Adjectives and Adverbs

Etymology:

From the Latin, "in relation to" + "word"

Observations:

• "A few adverbs exist without the benefit of the ly identity tag. . . . The words include: late, very, well, not, there, fast, quick, slow, close, deep, direct, fair, fine, hard, high, low, right, wrong, straight, tight, loud."
  (Val Dumond, Grammar for Grownups, Harper, 1993)



• "I am dead to adverbs; they cannot excite me. To misplace an adverb is a thing which I am able to do with frozen indifference; it can never give me a pang."
  (Mark Twain, Atlantic Monthly, June 1880))



• "I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs. To put it another way, they're like dandelions."
  (Stephen King, On Writing, 2000)

Examples:

• "To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive."
  (Robert Louis Stevenson)



• "War puts its questions stupidly, peace mysteriously."
  (Andre Malraux)



• "Life is that which--pressingly, persistently, unfailingly, imperially--interrupts."
  (Cynthia Ozick, "Pear Tree and Polar Bear," Esquire, August 1985)



• "In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong."
  (John Kenneth Galbraith)



• "In the heat of a political lifetime, Ronald Reagan innocently squirrels away tidbits of misinformation and then, sometimes years later, casually drops them into his public discourse, like gum balls in a quiche."
  (Lucy Howard)

Pronunciation: AD-vurb