Adjectives vs. Adverbs

Adjectives are words that describe nouns or pronouns. They may come before (The cute kitten is sitting on the chair.) or they may come after (The kitten is cute.) the word they describe.

Adverbs are words that describe everything but nouns and pronouns. They describe adjectives, verbs, and other adverbs. Adverbs answer the questions how, when, or where.

The adverbs that cause the most grammatical confusion are the ones that answer how. Below are some guidelines to help distinguish between adverbs and adjectives.

Guideline 1: If a word answers the question how, it is usually an adverb.

Guideline 2: When describing taste, smell, look, or feel, instead of asking if these senses answer the question how, ask if the sense verb is being used actively.

Example: Flowers smell sweet/sweetly.

Do the flowers actively smell with noses? Of course not because flowers do not have noses, so “sweet” is the correct word to use.

Try It!

Select which word is appropriate for each sentence.

1. She thinks slow/slowly.
2. We performed bad/badly.
3. The woman looked angry/angrily.
4. The boy jumped quick/quickly.
5. The hamburger tasted disgusting/disgustingly.

Answers:

1. slowly
2. badly
3. angry
4. quickly
5. disgusting