Adverbs

To begin with, forget the one about 'adverbs end with -ly'. A lot of very important adverbs don't (for example, tomorrow, here, and fast). And there are words ending in -ly that aren't adverbs, like friendly and silly.

Adverbs are a class of words that can:

1. act as an adverbial: The anger came later.
2. form the headword of an adverb phrase: luckily for us
3. be used to modify an adjective in an adjective phrase: very stupid
4. be used to modify an adverb in an adverb phrase: rather rashly
5. be formed from many qualitative adjectives by the addition of -ly:
   slow --> slowly

Intensifiers

Numbers 2, 3, and 4 in the list show how adverbs can be used in the formation of phrases. Adverbs used to alter the meanings of adjectives and other adverbs are known as intensifiers. They can make them stronger:

I think it's incredibly dangerous.

or weaker:

It was slightly fuzzy.

or sit on the fence:

He sounds quite interesting.

Whatever the effect we achieve, these adverbs are called intensifiers. It is possible to pile them up one on top of another, too:

Our trade union structure is quite extraordinarily intricate...

If you use adverbs to intensify adjectives as in the examples above, you are creating adjective phrases. So, for example, slightly fuzzy is an adjective phrase. If you intensify adverbs in a similar way, you create an adverb phrase. For example:

This happened very quickly.

Here the intensifier very modifies the adverb quickly to create an adverb phrase very quickly.

©John Seely 2008