An adverb is a word or an expression that modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering questions such as how, when, where, how often, how much, and to what extent. Adverbs can be used to show manner (how something happens), degree (to what extent), place (where), and time (when) . Adverbs are traditionally regarded as one of the parts of speech, but modern linguists note that the term adverb has come to be used as a kind of "catch-all" category, used to classify words with various types of syntactic behavior.
Some common examples of adverbs include:
- really, very
- well, badly
- today, yesterday, everyday, etc.
- sometimes, often, rarely, etc.
- early, late, soon, etc.
- here, there, everywhere, etc.
Adverbs can be formed by adding -ly to the end of an adjective, although there are also adverbs that don’t have this ending. Some adverbs use the same form as their corresponding adjectives, known as flat adverbs (e.g., “straight,” “fast,” “early”) . Some adverbs can modify entire sentences, known as sentence adverbs.
