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I know that a flat adverb is an adverb that has the same form as its related adjective, but does that mean any adverb without the -ly suffix is grammatically correct? For instance, if I said I am “extreme angry,” is that the same as saying I am “extremely angry”? Or is saying that it is “dangerous hot outside” the same as saying it is “dangerously hot outside”? I realize that flat adverbs are less common than they used to be, but that doesn’t change the question: Are flat adverbs always formed from words, namely adjectives, missing the -ly suffix?

PS: Flat Adverbs by Merriam-Webster is what prompted my question:

“Flat adverbs used to be much more common than they are today. For example, in Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe writes of weather that is "violent hot." Samuel Pepys wrote in his famous diary of being "horrid angry." But most of these adverbs have long since been abandoned.”

Bolded words are my emphasis.

Laurel
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    You can't use flat adverbs everywhere - "to bold go where no man has gone before" sounds wrong. – Peter Shor Oct 19 '18 at 14:23
  • @PeterShor Exactly. So when are flat adverbs appropriate? (Love The Original Series, by the way.) –  Oct 19 '18 at 14:33
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    It's not a case of "when are they appropriate?", it's a case of "which ones are always flat, which ones are never flat, and which ones swing both ways?". Only in the last case is there need for conditions. Most adjectives are regular and mildly accept the -ly suffix, but there are some common ones that don't or that have funny conditions. – John Lawler Oct 19 '18 at 15:21
  • @JohnLawler And what about the examples I gave? How do you know when a flat adverb is used correctly? (Used correct?) Like in “the child was dreadfully tired.” Can I say that the child was dreadful tired? –  Oct 19 '18 at 15:23
  • Flattening adverbs is a dialectal characteristic. Read Treasure Island, iirc, to see lots of it in the seamen's talk, which is based on an impression of 19th- C lower class dialects. I don't recall if Dickens does it too. So flatten your adverbs on Talk Like A Pirate Day, if you like. Otherwise people may think you're making a joke. – John Lawler Oct 19 '18 at 15:29
  • @JohnLawler I see. But what about in the past when flat adverbs were much more prevalent? Were adjectives and adverbs indistinguishable, apart from those that are always flat (like fast) and never flat (like friendly)? Incidentally, another adverbial form of friendly is friendlily. –  Oct 19 '18 at 15:33
  • No, of course not. Don't confuse writing with language -- "in the past", as in the present, we learn and use and change language orally. Writing doesn't record things like stress, intonation, rhythm, gaze direction, or gesture -- to name only a few. There's a vast difference between reading a play and acting it. Any word used as an adverb will be presented as such in speech, and the same for everything else. That's all that matters. – John Lawler Oct 19 '18 at 15:39
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    @JohnLawler I don’t think I’m confused. See, I am a writer myself, so the written word is most important to me. Merriam-Webster’s article on flat adverbs lists two examples of flat adverbs that piqued my interest, one from Daniel Defoe (“violent hot”) and the other from Samuel Pepys (“horrid angry”). It seemed to me when I read it that any adjective can be made into an adverb by simply removing the -ly suffix. –  Oct 19 '18 at 15:41
  • I don’t really understand what you’re asking here. The fact that a flat adverb is an adverb which is identical in form to the adjective it’s derived from (by zero-derivation) doesn’t mean that an adverb can be zero-derived from any adjective. Why would it? A weak verb is (simplistically) one whose past tense and past participle is the base form + -ed, but that doesn’t mean that you can make a weak verb out of any verb: I beed or I haved or I shalled are all ungrammatical. Flat adverbs exist, but that doesn’t mean all adjectives can be flat-adverbed. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 22 '18 at 15:00
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    @He Who Shall Not Be Named As a writer myself, I see your point. If one is writing a historical novel and trying to be authentic with the language of that period, it would be helpful to have a rule about when flat adverbs can be coined, even if it's just for that time period. Or did the pirates just decide willy-nilly? – Zan700 Oct 23 '18 at 16:15
  • @Zan700 Yes, exactly my point. Thank you. –  Oct 23 '18 at 16:16
  • Pirates didn't have grammar books or speak standard English. If you want to know if a particular word can be or could be used as a flat adverb, look in the OED, or search archives like Google Books. And if you're writing fiction, there is no requirement that you follow genuine grammar rules - it's fine to bend rules to give the impression you want (e.g. of oldness). – Stuart F Jul 13 '23 at 15:12

2 Answers2

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You can't just willy-nilly remove the suffix and make it a flat adverb. Well, technically you can, but it's going to sound awful bad to a lot of people. See what I did there?

Some adverbs are flat by "standard" usage.

Take it slow contains slow as a flat adverb, and sounds perfectly normal, thought take it slowly also sounds fine.

Fast never uses an -ly form. They moved fastly wouldn't be correct to anyone's ears. Fast is an inherently flat adverb.

Edit: However, it has become common to use adjectives in an adverbial way on the Internet. Aside from the Bostonian "wicked awesome", I see more and more social media posts using flat adverb-type wording. So, given the way English works, I'd say in a few years you'll be able to just flatten any adverb you like and people will find it relatively normal.

Jesse Williams
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1) No, you cannot just use any adjective as an adverb. Extreme angry and dangerous hot are grammatically incorrect. As Jesse Williams says, "wicked awesome," may be a colloquial phrase from Boston, but that does not make it correct.

Flat adverbs can be a bit confusing as the conventions change. In general, flat adverbs that "swing both ways" are considered conversational or informal (real, slow, quick, etc).

2) Are flat adverbs always formed from adjectives "missing" the -ly suffix? Yes. That pretty much defines a flat adverb. It is an adverb that is also an adjective.

One of the confusing points about flat adverbs is that some words are basically always flat adverbs, some words are grammatically acceptable as flat adverbs, and some words are used colloquially as flat adverbs but are grammatically incorrect. Some situations blur the lines between these categories.

For example, fast is a flat adverb. We don't really say, "He walked fastly down the street." We can say, "He walked fast," or we can use some other adverb like rapidly, quickly or hastily. Fast is pretty much always a flat adverb, but you might find some uses of fastly in very old, obscure texts.

Slow is a word that has come to be accepted as a flat adverb. I read about a survey in which a majority of native English speakers considered "walk slow" to be unacceptable in the 1960s. However, in 2015, the majority accepted the phrase as grammatically correct (https://bridgingtheunbridgeable.com/usage-polls/). Note that slow is not always appropriate for use as an adverb. For example, you can write, "He walks slow," but you cannot correctly write, "He slow walks." You can write, "He slowly walks." Some have also pointed out the slight difference in meaning as one puts more emphasis on the adverb. "Walk slow" has a different feeling than "slowly walk."

This brings up another point on the appropriateness of flat adverbs. Some were once considered grammatically incorrect, but are not accepted in conversation or informal writing. "That looks real nice," may be accepted in conversation, but it is grammatically incorrect. "Walk slow" is more accepted, but you will sound like a bit of a rube if you say, "He drove slow down the street." What's worse? "He drove real slow down that busy street." That said, slow is accepted as a grammatically correct flat adverb, at least in informal writing or conversation, while real has not been accepted. It can be really confusing. Using a random adjective as an adverb is usually not correct, but it has a conversational feeling, like wicked cool or straight fucked. http://www.learnersdictionary.com/qa/Slow-Slowly-and-Flat-Adverbs

Another strange phenomenon is that flat adverbs were stylistically common for a while (early 18th century), and then they went out of style (late 19th century). Lately, they have been coming back into style in slang and conversation. Supposedly the term flat adverb was coined "in 1871 by John Earle, and even in that time they were viewed as "rustic and poetic" because they were "archaic"." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_adverb#cite_note-:1-16

In recent years, flat adverbs often come into vernacular conversationally from regional dialects or colloquialisms and later make their way into the mainstream. The internet, slang, and local dialects seem to be bringing more flat adverbs into acceptance. It can be mad confusing.

Wilfred
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