There have been a couple of comments about my post on Jodi Kantor’s piece in Sunday’s New York Times that take issue with my use of the word “badly.” “What if,” I wrote, “some harm comes to the junior McCain? Would she [i.e., Ms. Kantor] feel badly about that?” One tutelary spirit wrote in to observe en passant (and ungrammatically) that “More correctly, the question would be ‘Would she feel bad . . .’” (The chap should have written something like “It would have been correct to say that . . .”) “Davis,” another would-be benefactor, followed suit with this: “By the way, it’s ‘feel bad,’ not ‘feel badly.’ You’re a bad writer because you write badly, but I don’t feel sadly about it.”
Well, “Davis” should feel sadly, and badly, about it.
I always endeavor to instruct as well as delight, so allow me to introduce these public-spirited individuals–and any readers they may have misled–to the adverb, a part of speech that paradigmatically answers the question how, as in: “How was she feeling?” “Not well. Badly, in fact.” As the American Heritage Dictionary points out, “The use of bad and good as adverbs, while common in informal speech, should be avoided in writing. Formal usage requires: “My tooth hurts badly not bad.”
Update: I should have noted, as several friends have been quick to point out, that, though “badly” is correct, “feel” is a linking verb and therefore the modifier is properly a predicate adjective. John Edwards (remember him?) inadvertently illustrated this in the theme song chosen to accompany the world’s most famous campaign haircut. Watch and listen to it it here.
Cool it, Roger. Not only are we a nation of apostrophic idiots and conscientious reducers of language to acronyms and mispellings, we are now also a nation of the massively, electronically self-published. And as you must know, the self-published tend to be very proud of their expertise as writers, and offer freely to share it. The spirits of W. A. and E. B. White vanished from the media many decades ago.
But “Davis” is correct to limited extent– He’s a pedantic (albeit ill-informed) writer because he writes pedantically.
If you’re sad, are you feeling bluely? Or downly?
Wouldn’t the word feels be serving as a copulative verb in that sentence? If so, bad would refer back to the subject. Badly would refer to the verb. A person with numb hands could be said to feel textures badly, but he would feel bad about not being able to distinguish among different textures.
Roger, isn’t vb ^^ correct? That’s what I was always taught, but alas I’m now quite confused about the issue. What thinkest thou? Please save us from this grammatical swamp! ~katz
Why not cut the Gordian knot by using the old English word ‘poorly?’
“How are felling you today, Mrs Pleb?”
“Poorly, Vicar, but my grammar has improved since I started reading Dot Wordsworth’s Soectator column on words and dipped into that copy of Fowler that you lent me.”
“I should have noted, as several friends have been quick to point out, that, though “badly” is correct, “feel” is a linking verb and therefore the modifier is properly a predicate adjective.”
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Well, yes and no. It’s not as simple as that. What’s been missing in this discussion is the linguistic category of semantics (or meaning), which always trumps grammar or proper usage. It also greatly depends on which word is in use. For example:
Both sentences below are correct although the verb “feel” is “linking” an adjective in one case and an adverb in the other. It depends on what you mean:
I FEEL POOR….meaning you feel like you need more money. (and that’s all it can mean)
I FEEL POORLY…..meaning that you are somewhat ill. (and that’s all it can mean)
However,
I FEEL BAD…..means that you are ill.
(it can also mean that you feel EVIL, like in I FEEL BAD SO I’M
GOING TO GO AND (TO) TORCH A GOODWILL STORE.)
(it can also mean that someone is “cool”, like in HE’S A REAL BAD
DUDE)
It can also mean, in “informal” usage., as Mr. Kimball pointed out, that you feel BADLY about something as in: I WONDER IF SHE FEELS BAD ABOUT STRIKING HER ELDERLY MOTHER, although here, BADLY would be more – not necessarily “correct” but more “literary”.
Since Mr. Kimball is a literary dude, he used the more educated usage BADLY and is therefore exonerated.
On the other hand, once another adj/adv comes into play, these “rules” do not necessarily apply. As in:
I FEEL SAD……..can only mean that you are unhappy.
I FEEL SADLY……(non-existent)
SADLY …..is usually found in sentences such as: SADLY, HE FLUNKED THE
ENGLISH EXAM., meaning “unfortunately”. It can also mean “in an
unhappy way” is in HE SPOKE SADLY ABOUT HIS BAD (ILL?)
LUCK.
(NOTE: You can say ILL LUCK, but you can’t say SICK LUCK, even
though “sick” and “ill” are synonyms)
And so on.
Point 1 is that a LINKING VERB is not always followed by a “predicate adjective”, despite the rule that it is. It can also be followed by a “predicate adverb” as in I FEEL POORLY…a perfectly acceptable sentence).
Point 2 is that meaning trumps grammar. English is notorious for this sort of thing.
Point 3 is that words themselves have a life of their own. What might be true for one word does not necessarily apply to another word, as in the BAD/SAD examples above.
Addendum:
One more thing. The specific question in these posts have to do with the word BAD.
I should have mentioned that the problem with and what is confusing about BAD is that it is BOTH an adjective and an adverb. (Of course, the adverb BADLY exists, but BAD as an adverb is also extant).
In other words, BAD has two adverbs: BAD and BADLY
That is why it’s ok to say: I FEEL BAD/BADLY. What determines which to use depends, in this case, on one’s educational level and what audience one is addressing.
At the same time, just because BAD is both an adjective and an adverb doesn’t mean it can be used under any circumstance as either one. Usage determines which is acceptable in one case and not the other.
As I said in my first post , words have an independent meaning and function beyond their purely grammatical categorization. BAD is one of these.
Thus, the word ILL is also an adjective and an adverb…..but there is no corresponding “ILLLY” as is true with “BADLY”.
Et cetera.
The Anglo-Saxon bedrock of modern English is both a joy and a curse. It is the most difficult strata of our contemporary language at the phonetic, phonemic and semantic levels. Very few non-native speakers ever master its intricacies even though they have no problem with the Latin derivations of English. Anglo-Saxon prepositions, for example are, for non-native English speakers, almost impossible to learn to use correctly.