Parts of Speech: Adjectives & Adverbs
The different jobs of words
in grammar are known as parts of speech. The two most important
parts of speech are nouns and verbs. A noun is a person, place, thing,
or idea: student, school, book, theology. A verb expresses action or state of being: run, study, read, is.
| noun | verb |
| The student graduated. | |
| noun | verb |
| The car crashed. | |
Of course, not every sentence is that simple!
In good writing you need to use descriptive language to best convey facts and ideas. That’s where these next two parts of speech really come in handy.
Adjectives & Adverbs
Adjectives and adverbs add levels of description to a sentence by modifying, supporting, and strengthening other words; but it’s important to know the difference between the two. An adjective is a word that modifies and describes a noun. That means adjectives are always modifying people, places, things, or ideas:
An angry student
A large school.
A thick red book.
An interesting idea.
A large school.
A thick red book.
An interesting idea.
These adjectives help us better understand each noun because adjectives convey emotion, size, color, quality and more. Adverbs are similar in that they also modify and describe, but here’s the catch. Adverbs NEVER modify nouns. Adverbs are always used to describe verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. Let’s look at some examples.
The student very angrily slammed the door.
A rather large school.
An extremely thick red book.
An incredibly interesting idea
A rather large school.
An extremely thick red book.
An incredibly interesting idea
Very, angrily, rather, extremely, and incredibly are all adverbs. Angrily shows the emotion behind the student’s action. Very tells us the degree to which that action was angry. Rather tells us that the school is large to a great or considerable extent. Extremely suggests the book is unusually thick. Incredibly helps show the extent to which the idea is interesting.
Functional Shift
Words often take on different forms depending on their job in the sentence. When its function shifts, usually its form does as well:
Anger is a noun referring to the emotion of being angry.
Angry is an adjective used to describe a person who has anger.
Angrily is an adverb used to describe the actions of an angry person.
To help identify when a word shifts to function as an adverb, keep in mind that many adverbs end in -ly: quickly, fortunately, sadly, happily, and so forth. When using an -ly adverb, double check to ensure that it is not modifying a noun. For example, "I have a happily dog." And if you were describing action you would use the adverb form: "The dog happily licked my face."
Using the incorrect part of speech often changes the meaning of your sentence. Let’s look at an example:
I feel badly.
Using the adverb “badly” means we are modifying the action “feel,” suggesting the speaker has poor touch sensation and is “bad at feeling” or “feels ineffectively.” It’s much more likely the speaker wants to express his or her emotional state. In that case the sentence should read:
I feel bad.
“Bad” is an adjective. It modifies the speaker “I” so we know that the speaker's state of being is bad, not that the sense of touch is bad.
Always the Same
Another thing to keep in mind is that some descriptive words remain the same whether they are being used as adjectives or adverbs:
Adjective: I enjoy my daily morning jog.
Adverb: I jog daily.
Adverb: I jog daily.
In these two sentences, "daily" is used as an adjective to describe the noun "morning." Then it is used as an adverb to describe how frequently the jogging takes place. Here other words that usually stay the same no matter what function they serve.
| daily early far fast | first hard high late | little long loud low | much near straight wide |
Review
The kind of word you are modifying tells you whether you need to use an adjective or an adverb:
- If you are describing a noun, use an adjective.
- If you are describing a verb, adjective, or another adverb use an adverb.
- Adverbs often end in –ly, which can be a helpful way to identify them.