Adjectives and adverbs (quick/quickly)

You can say:

Our holiday was too short – the time passed very quickly.

Two people were seriously injured in the accident.

Quickly and seriously are adverbs. Many adverbs are adjective + -ly:

adjective           quick            serious        careful       bad           heavy             terrible
adverb              quickly        seriously   carefully    badly       heavily           terribly

Not all words ending in -ly are adverbs. Some adjectives end in -ly too, for example:

    friendly        lively      elderly      lonely         lovely
 

• It was a lovely day

Adjective or adverb

Compare:

We use adjectives after some verbs, especially be, and also look/feel/sound etc.

Compare:

You can also use adverbs before adjectives and other adverbs. For example:

reasonably cheap                                     (adverb + adjective)
terribly sorry                                             (adverb + adjective)
incredibly quickly                                      (adverb + adverb)

• It’s a reasonably cheap restaurant and the food is extremely good.

• I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t mean to push you.

• Maria learns languages incredibly quickly.

• The exam was surprisingly easy

  .

You can also use an adverb before a past participle (injured/organised/written etc.):

• Two people were seriously injured in the accident. (not serious injured)

• The conference was badly organised.

Try this exercise to test your grammar.

Language Level