building blocksAdjectives and Adverbs


Adjectives such as beautiful, nice, and red describe nouns. Adverbs such as quickly, badly, or warmly describe verbs. This page will explain the differences between them, and show you how to make adverbs from adjectives.

1. Using adjectives and adverbs

Adjective Adverb Example
beautiful   Ann is beautiful.
  beautifully Ann sings beautifully.
warm   The room is warm.
  warmly Joe smiles warmly.
slow   The car is slow.
  slowly Ann drives slowly.

2. Making adverbs from adjectives

Adverbs are usually made from adjectives by adding -LY. These are the rules:

Adjective ending in... How to make the adverb Examples
y Change Y to I and add -LY heavy - heavily
happy - happily
lazy - lazily
[anything else] Just add -LY warm - warmly
nice - nicely
loud - loudly

There are some important exceptions:

Adjective Adverb
good well
late late
(“Lately” means recently.
It is not the adverb
from “late”.)
early early
fast fast
hard hard
(“Hardly” means not much.
It is not the adverb
from “hard”.)
