On dictionaries(for instance, definitions of awesome and amazing on Cambridge Dictionary), there are no definitions of "awesome" or "amazing" as adverbs (they are only defined as adjectives), but I think native English speakers can use them as adverbs. So I wonder if it is wrong usage because you can't find any adverb definitions of them. For example, is it wrong to say,

  • "The Lakers played amazing tonight" to mean "The Lakers played in an amazing way/extremely well tonight";

and is it wrong to say,

  • "The Lakers played awesome tonight" to mean "The Lakers played in an awesome way/extremely well tonight"?

And another question is, if those two words can be used as adverbs, why isn't this specified on dictionaries?

Context: The Lakers are a famous basketball team.

  • 1
    The syntactic principle is the same whichever of good, awesome, confident you include in your utterance (as opposed to well, awesomely, confidently). But whereas using good instead of well here isn't particularly uncommon, using confident instead of confidently would be quite unlikely. Awesome instead of awesomely falls somewhere between those two extremes of "acceptability" - but if you want to be "right", stick to true adverbs. Mar 12, 2020 at 16:23

1 Answer 1


No, those are adjectives. You could turn them into adverbs and say they played "amazingly" or "awesomely".
Another possibility is to use the words as adjectives: "They played an amazing/awesome game."
You may hear some native speakers use those adjectives as adverbs, but they will sound uneducated to many of us.

  • We get tired of hearing 'awesome' all the damn time. Alternatives are a good thing. Mar 12, 2020 at 16:31

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