Am I alone in lamenting the death of the proper form of the adverb? I am quite fond of adverbs because they add context to the verb. The ‘how’ to the who, what, where and why?

For example, where would we be without the good old adverb in cookery programmes? Ingredients are finely ground, freshly squeezed, slowly roasted, thinly sliced etc. How long will it take before even cookery, (the last bastion of the adverb it seems), starts to use the shorter form without the ‘ly’ ending? Already slowly roasted has been replaced with ‘slow-roast’. How soon will we be watching chef fine-ground, fresh-squeeze and thin-slice his ingredients?

Yes, the examples above are using the words as adverbs, but not in their correct form. The question I ask is: Do we not have enough time in our busy lives to pronounce or write the ‘ly’ at the end of an adverb?

People read books ‘quick’ or ‘slow’, rather than quickly or slowly. Groups whisper in corners ‘quiet’ instead of quietly. A child strokes a pet ‘gentle’ or ‘gentle-like’, when they could stroke it gently. The audience applauds the pianist or guitarist for playing their instruments ‘beautiful’. Whereas I think that they played them beautifully.

In American television programmes, you hear an actor saying he will do something ‘real quick’ instead of really quickly, or even just quickly. Thankfully, this particular phrase does not seem to have made it across the Atlantic yet, but I fear the writing is on the wall, (so to speak!)

Of course, not all adverbs end in ‘ly’ and not all words ending in ‘ly’ are adverbs. (For example, elderly, which is an adjective.) But, it is this particular ending that we are losing, particularly in spoken language. How many examples of a dropped ‘ly’ have you noticed today?

You can read an interesting blog on this topic from the Oxford University Press.