What are adverbs?

Adverbs are words that tell us how, when, where something happens.

A lot of adverbs end in ‘..-ly’ and tell us how an action has been done.

‘He drives slowly.’

‘She speaks quickly‘.

There are many adverbs just like ‘slowly’ and ‘quickly’ that describe a ‘verb’ and tell us how it is done.
Not all adverbs end in ‘ly’.

Two of the most famous examples of adverbs which do not end in ‘…-ly’ are ‘:

• well
• fast

‘How does he speak French? He speaks French well.‘

We cannot use the word ‘good’ here, because ‘good’ is an adjective and describes nouns, things. ‘The book is good’, ‘The food is good’.

‘Book’ and ‘food’ are nouns.

‘How does he drive? He drives very fast.’

We do not say ‘fastly’ but just fast, but here it’s an adverb as it’s describing a verb.

‘When adverbs’.

Adverbs which tell us when something happens include:

‘after’, ‘before’, ‘now’, ‘never’ ‘soon’, ‘then’.

So for example if we say ‘He wrote the book quickly‘. The word ‘quickly’ is an adverb and tells us how he wrote.

If we say ‘He wrote the book after lunch.’ The word ‘after’ is an adverb and tells us when he wrote.

‘Quickly’ tells us how. ‘After’ tells us when.

Both are adverbs.

‘Where adverbs’.

Where adverbs tells us where something happened.

They include ‘here’, ‘there’, ‘inside’, ‘outside’, ‘everywhere’ and other words.

‘He wrote the book quickly.’

‘He wrote the book after lunch.’

‘He wrote the book inside.’

So ‘inside’ is an adverb as it tells us ‘where’ he wrote the book.

‘Quickly’ tells us how he wrote the book, ‘after’ (after lunch) tells us when he wrote the book and ‘inside’ tells us where he wrote the book. All three words ‘quickly, ‘after’ and ‘inside’ are adverbs.

All three describe and give extra information about the verb ‘wrote’.

They tell us how, when and where he wrote.

‘Adverbs of degree’

Words such as ‘very’, ‘highly’, ‘extremely’ are also adverbs.

‘He wrote the book very quickly’ has two adverbs, ‘very’ and ‘quickly’.

‘Comparative adverbs’

Adverbs that compare are called ‘comparative adverbs’ and they include words such as:

‘more’, ‘less’, ‘better’, ‘worse’ and others.

They can be used to describe how much i.e. quantity e.g. ‘less’, ‘more’ and compare too.

‘Adverbial phrases’

An Adverb is not always a word. Sometimes it can be a phrase.

We call these phrases ‘adverbial phrases’.

Examples include:

‘He studied every day.’

‘…every day’ is an adverbial phrase because not only does it tell us when he studied, but also more information that it was not just one day, but ‘every’ day.

‘She wrote more than me‘

‘…more than me‘ is an adverbial phrase in this sentence because it describes ‘how much’ she wrote in comparison to me.

We hope you found this brief explanation to adverbs useful and please comment if you have any questions!