Adverbs vs. Adjectives

[fyffer]

For you grammarians out there.

Which of the following is correct (to describe my state of health, or lack thereof).

"For the past week, I have been feeling crappy."

"For the past week, I have been feeling crappily."

(Neither of which to be confused with, "I feel like crap", which of course is obvious)

Discuss, while I go get my lunch.

NOTE: This is not a health discussion, as that is summarily out-of-bounds.

[djm]

"Crappily" suggests that crap has the ability to perform some form of sense operation, or has a sensing organ of some kind capable of feeling. I'd go with "crappy," though I am hardly a grammarian of any kind.

djm

[jbarter]

"For the past week, I have been feeling crappy.".

So.... Snow White had eight dwarfs huh?

[Denny]

inside information

[Innocent Bystander]

Which is correct depends on what you mean to say.

"I have been feeling crappy" is what you might call standard usage. Hard to mistake that. You feel (intransitive) crappy (adjectival noun describing a state).

"I have been feeling crappily" is imaginitively different. Intransitive verbs are not so easily given adverbs. It converts the sense of the verb into a transitive one. My startled response to this is "Who or what have you been feeling crappily, the poor things?"

I'm sorry for being cheeky about the Baby Ruth. I didn't know that, and I appreciate the information.

[PallasAthena]

(double post)

[PallasAthena]

"feeling crappily" implies that the feeling is crappy. Like running quickly implies that the running is quick. "Feeling crappy" implies that whatever is feeling is crappy, I assume. I think whether we consider "to feel" transitive or intransitive might be important, but I'm not sure exactly how...

*head explodes*

[gonzo914]

If the verb is a linking verb, or as I prefer, a copulative verb, use an adjective; if it's a transitive or intransitive verb, use the adverb.

Examples --

He smells bad. He stinks. Use an adjective.

He smells badly. His smeller is broken, and he can't smell things. Use an adverb.

One of many usage guides available on the internet if you know how to look

LINKING OR COPULATIVE VERBS are the special and relatively few verbs that tie a subject to a predicate complement—either a predicate nominative (Mary is my sister) or a predicate adjective (Mary seems bright). (Historically, adverbs used to appear regularly after linking verbs too.) Be, seem, and become are linking verbs, or copula, in almost all uses; come, feel, get, go, grow, lie, look, prove, remain, sound, stay, and turn can serve as linking verbs (I grew weary), transitive verbs (I grew roses), or intransitive verbs (I grew slowly). See LINKED GENITIVES.

But I'm sure someone will come along and tell you how their mama back in the holler allus use t' say how she were feelin' poorly.

[Bloomfield]

Why don't you Henry Higginses explain "I am feeling well," while you're at it.

[fyffer]

I'm sorry for being cheeky about the Baby Ruth. I didn't know that, and I appreciate the information.

Oh puhleeze - no apology necessary.
Wikipedia is your friend in the digital age (though I did actually know that little tidbit).

[emmline]

Why don't you Henry Higginses explain "I am feeling well," while you're at it.

Come here and I'll demonstrate.

[Bloomfield]

Why don't you Henry Higginses explain "I am feeling well," while you're at it.

Come here and I'll demonstrate.

Willingly.

[djm]

Why don't you Henry Higginses explain "I am feeling well," while you're at it.

re. I am feeling well.

Hope this helps:


re. Henry Higgins:

Pygmalion (1913) is a play by George Bernard Shaw based on Ovid's tale of Pygmalion. It tells the story of Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics (based on phonetician Henry Sweet or possibly Alexander Melville Bell), who makes a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering that he can successfully pass off a Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, as a refined society lady by teaching her how to speak with an upper class accent and training her in etiquette. In the process, Higgins and Doolittle grow close, but she ultimately rejects his domineering ways and declares she will marry Freddy Eynsford-Hill – a young, poor, gentleman.

djm

[Innocent Bystander]

...It is astonishing how much Eliza still manages to meddle with the housekeeping in Wimpole Street in spite of the shop and her own family. And it is notable that though she never nags her husband, and frankly loves the Colonel as though she were his favourite daughter, she has never got out of the habit of nagging Higgins that was established on the fatal night when she won his bet for him. She snaps his head off on the slightest provocation, or on none. He no longer dares to tease her on the inferiority of Freddy's mind to his own. He storms and bullies and derides; but she stands up to him so ruthlessly that the Colonel has to ask her from time to time to be kinder to Higgins; and it is the only request of his that brings a mulish expression into her face. Nothing but some emergency or calamity great enough to break down all likes and dislikes, and throw them both back on their common humanity - and may they be spared any such trial! - will ever alter this. She knows that Higgins does not need her, just as her father did not need her. The very scrupulousness with which he told her that day that he had become dependant on her for all sorts of little services, and that he should missher if she went away (it would never have occurred to Freddy or the Colonel to say anything of the sort) deepens her inner certainty that she is 'no more to him than them slippers'; yet she has a sense, too, that his indifference is deeper than the infatuation of commoner souls. She is immensely interested in him. She has even secret mischievous moments in which she wishes she could get him alone, on a desert island, away from all the ties and with nobody else in the world to consider, and just drag him off his pedestal and see him making love like any common man. We all have private imaginations of that sort. But when it comes to business, to the life that she really leads as distinguished from the life of creams and fancies, she likes Freddy and she likes the Colonel; and she does not like Higgins and Mr Dolittle. Galatea never does quite like Pygmalion: his relation to her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable.

[izzarina]

"I have been feeling crappily" is imaginitively different. Intransitive verbs are not so easily given adverbs. It converts the sense of the verb into a transitive one. My startled response to this is "Who or what have you been feeling crappily, the poor things?"