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8:16AM
Oct-06-09
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Grant Barrett
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Post edited 2:16PM – Oct-08-09 by Grant Barrett
Is it acceptable to make a brand-new adverb simply by adding an -ly to an adjective? A scientist wants to know, and specifically a term she uses, nuclearly.
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8:09AM
Oct-06-09
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Glenn
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Post edited 8:55PM – Oct-06-09 by Glenn
At the end of the podcast Grant and Martha discuss chilly, chillily, holy and holily. These examples are great. Still, you must employ some caution when turning certain adjectives ending in -ly into adverbs. I once had a colleague who sensitized me to this matter. There are a number of such adjectives which remain unchanged as adverbs. Likely and gingerly are good examples.
That is a likely story.
That likely will happen today.
She has a gingerly way with her patients.
He tread gingerly into the meeting.
I shocked my colleague by asserting that I had found an entry for gingerlily in one large unabridged dictionary. I was slow to reveal that it was not an adverb, but a noun — a variety of plant and flower. It was a compound of ginger and lily.
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9:06PM
Oct-06-09
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Tukaram
| | Dallas, TX | |
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I found a few uses of nuclearly on various, questionable, (wiktionary) sources but here is one from sciencedirect.com "Telomere Sequences Attached to Nuclearly Migrated Yeast Linear Plasmid" (Now watch this article be written by the Dr that called in.)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/plas.1999.1454
Nuclearly… it's not just in Wiktionary anymore.
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9:26PM
Oct-09-09
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Ron Draney
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A while back I started putting together a list of adjectives that end in "-ly" (in flagrant violation of the heuristic I was given in the fifth grade that says a word ending in "-ly" must be an adverb). One thing they all have in common is that they sound ridiculous when you add a second "-ly" to make genuine adverbs of them:
"I suggested friendlily that she was behaving sillily; in fact, I couldn't remember ever hearing an argument made more uglily."
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12:04PM
Oct-11-09
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Glenn
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Post edited 5:37PM – Oct-12-09 by Glenn
Ron, you and I must share some characteristics. I also put together a list of -ly adjectives, then started grouping them by their adverb formation, which fell into four categories: no 'standard' adverb ( e.g. girly, measly); adverb with -y replaced with -ily (examples above); adverb identical (examples above); adverb in either form (e.g. lively, livelily). It ended up being fairly unenlightening, I am sorry to say. Or my mind was too puny to squeeze the insight from the exercise.
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