Formation of Adverbs

We have all had our parents ask us to ‘get ready for school quickly’ or to ‘play carefully’ or to ‘do homework regularly’. These words that you hear so often – quickly, carefully, regularly, are all called ‘adverbs’. Just like nouns, verbs, pronouns, and adjectives; adverbs are also one of the different parts of speech. Let’s learn more about the formation of adverbs and how they are used in sentences.

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Definition of Adverbs

An adverb is a word that modifies a verb, an adjective or another adverb. In other words, adverbs describe actions or other descriptive words. For example – Manav runs slowly. Here the word ‘slowly’ describes the action of running and therefore, is an adverb.

Browse more Topics under Adverb

• Introduction to Adverbs
• Kinds of Adverbs

Formation of Adverbs

• Most of the times, an adverb is formed by adding ‘ly’ to an adjective. Examples of such formation of adverbs are as follows:

Adjective	Adverb
quick	quickly
slow	slowly
beautiful	beautifully
firm	firmly
delicate	delicately
abrupt	abruptly
careful	carefully
harsh	harshly
cheerful	cheerfully
sad	sadly

Sometimes, the adjective ends in ‘y’. In these cases, replace the ‘y’ with ‘i’ and add ‘ly’. Examples are as follows,

Adjective	Adverb
easy	easily
lucky	luckily
happy	happily
angry	angrily
hungry	hungrily
heavy	heavily
breezy	breezily
cozy	cozily
cheery	cheerily
busy	busily

• In some cases, the adjective ends in ‘le’, ‘able’ or ‘ible‘. In these cases, replace the ‘e’ with ‘y’. Examples of  these adverbs formation are,

Adjective	Adverb
gentle	gently
terrible	terribly
probable	probably
capable	capably
fashionable	fashionably
suitable	suitably
responsible	responsibly
eligible	eligibly
horrible	horribly
incredible	incredibly

• If the adjective ends in ‘ic, then add ‘ally’. The exception is ‘public’. The adverb for ‘public’ is ‘publicly’. Some examples are

Adjective	Adverb
tragic	tragically
basic	basically
dramatic	dramatically
energetic	energetically
economic	economically
strategic	strategically
arithmetic	arithmetically
geometric	geometrically
artistic	artistically
academic	academically

• For adjectives that end in ‘cal’, just add ‘ly’ to turn it into an adverb. Examples –

Adjective	Adverb
chemical	chemically
biological	biologically
logical	logically
grammatical	grammatically
physical	physically
mechanical	mechanically
mathematical	mathematically
musical	musically
critical	critically
medical	medically

• Some adverbs have the same form as their adjective. Some such words are,

Adjective	Adverb
early	early
late	late
daily	daily
far	far
close	close
fast	fast
free	free
high	high
low	low
long	long

The adverb for the adjective ‘good’ is ‘well’. Examples –

1. Jack is a good guitarist.     –     Jack plays the guitar well.
2. She is a good dancer.     –     She dances well.
3. Akshay is a good student.     –     Akshay studies well.
4. He is a good chess player.     –     He plays chess well.

Solved Example For You

Question 1: Give the adverbs of the following adjectives – domestic, reversible, crazy, radical, wide, soft, simple.

Solution 1:

Adjective	Adverb
domestic	domestically
reversible	reversibly
crazy	crazily
radical	radically
wide	wide
soft	softly
simple	simply

Question 2: Fill in the blanks with the best adverb from the brackets.

(carefully, suddenly, loudly, quickly, softly)

• She talks so ___________, you can hear her from miles away!
• Let’s walk __________, I don’t want to be late.
• Talk __________, the baby is sleeping!
• He walked _________ on the icy pavement because he did not want to slip and fall.
• It started raining _________, we were all soaked in minutes.

Solution 2:

• She talks so loudly, you can hear her from miles away!
• Let’s walk quickly, I don’t want to be late.
• Talk softly, the baby is sleeping!
• He walked carefully on the icy pavement because he did not want to slip and fall.
• It started raining suddenly, we were all soaked in minutes.