Question: I found your article on “Flat Adverbs” quite interesting. I am working in a medical facility alongside much younger co-workers. We often need to tell patients to hold their breaths, and then to release the breath. I grew up with plain old adverbs. I will direct the patients to “take a breath in and hold,” and then say, “Breathe normally.” Almost all of my younger co-workers will direct the patients to “take a breath in and hold,” and then say, “Breathe normal.” Am I to presume that we are both correct, and they are using flat adverbs?
Answer:
Thank you so much for sending in your question and providing your observant example. In the previous article that explained flat adverbs, we talked about how most adverbs can be spotted by their “-ly” ending. But the spelling isn’t what makes an adverb — the true differentiator is that an adverb describes a verb or an adjective. Flat adverbs do not have the “-ly” ending, but they still describe a verb or an adjective, so they are indeed adverbs. Typical flat adverbs include “hard,” “fast,” “high,” and “near.” Those words can also be adjectives, but here’s an example where they all function as adverbs: “James ran fast, his heart pounding as he pushed himself hard. The sun was high in the sky, and the finish line was near.”
The example with your co-workers brings up another interesting aspect of flat adverbs — they can be created. You say “breathe normally,” and that is a correct adverb usage. Your colleagues, when they say “breathe normal,” are dropping the “-ly” from the adverb and turning “normal” into a flat adverb. It may sound strange to your ears, but it is indeed a perfectly acceptable, albeit informal, usage. An academic assignment might take off points in the grading (we haven’t seen the rubric), but in verbal communication, the meaning is clear. To double check our work, we verified this informal grammatical usage with the Britannica Dictionary — it gives it a green light, too. Breathe easy, because you’re both correct with your adverb usage.
Do you have a grammar conundrum or a word etymology you’d like us to hunt down? Drop us a note!
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