Adverbs in English Grammar

What is an adverb?

Adverbs are describing words. We use them to modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs and entire clauses.

Adverbs give us more information about the word they modify such as how, when, where, how often and to what degree. Different types of adverbs include adverbs of manner (slowly), time (yesterday), frequency (often) and degree (very).

We can often identify adverbs by their -ly ending, although this is not always the case (e.g. yesterday/always). Adverbs also have comparative and superlative forms.

Learn how and when to use adverbs in English grammar with Lingolia’s online grammar rules. Then put your knowledge to the test in the interactive exercises.

Contents

On stage, the guitarist feels incredibly happy that his first ever concert is going so well.

The audience are singing along loudly and his bandmates are playing absolutely brilliantly.

Surely this will be a night to remember.

When to use adverbs in English grammar

We use adverbs to modify:

Examples:
The audience is singing along loudly.
The concert is going well.
His bandmates are playing brilliantly.
Examples:
The guitarist feels incredibly happy.
The music is unbelievably loud.
  • other adverbs
Examples:
His bandmates are playing absolutely brilliantly.
the adverb absolutely modifies the adverb brilliantly
His first ever concert is going so well.
the adverb so modifies the second adverb well
  • entire clauses
Example:
Surely this will be a night to remember.

How to Form Adverbs

Many adverbs are derived from adjectives. To form them, we simply take the adjective and add the adverb ending -ly.

Example:
loud → loudly

Spelling Rules

  • For true, due, and whole, we remove the e before adding -ly.
    Example:
    true → truly
  • A -y at the end of the adverb changes to -i.
    Example:
    happy → happily
  • When an adjective ends with a consonant + le, the le is removed before adding -ly.
    Example:
    sensible → sensibly
  • When an adjective ends with -ll, we simply add a -y. However, adjectives ending in -l take the -ly ending.
    Example:
    full → fully
    (but: final → finally)

Adjectives ending in -ic

Adjectives that end in -ic form the adverb using -ally (except for: public → publicly).

Example:
fantastic → fantastically

Irregular adverbs

The adjectives difficult, good and public have irregular adverb forms:

Adjective Adverb
good well
public publicly
difficult with difficulty

Some adjectives that end in -ly don’t have an adverb form. In this case, we use the phrase in a … way/manner, or we use a similar adverb.

Example:
friendly (adjective) → in a friendly way/in a friendly manner
likely (adjective) → probably (adverb)

The adjective and adverb forms are the same for the following words: early, hourly, daily, monthly, yearly.

Example:
a yearly concert → The concert happens yearly.

For more information about adjectives and adverbs that are the same, or the difference between adverbs and adjectives see: adjective or adverb.

Comparative and superlative adverbs

Some English adverbs also have comparative and superlative forms. Their form and use is the same as comparative and superlative adjectives:

  • add -er/-est to one-syllable adverbs and adverbs that have the same form as their adjectives (the same spelling rules as above apply)
Examples:
hard – harder – the hardest
late – later – the latest
early – earlier – the earliest
  • use more/the most for adverbs ending in -ly (exception: adverbs that are identical to their base adjective; see above).
Example:
happily – more happily – the most happily

Adverbs with irregular comparative and superlative forms

We have to learn the following irregular comparative forms by heart.

Adverb Comparative Superlative
well better the best
badly worse the worst
ill worse the worst
little less the least
much more the most
far (in space and time) further the furthest
far (in space) farther the farthest
late (in time) later the latest

More about adverbs

Check out the following pages to learn more about adverbs in English grammar: