Eat Healthy; Speak Bad
I despair at all the advice out there to “eat healthy.” No, I don’t have any problem with promoting the consumption of nutritional food. But I do have a problem with using an adjective in the place of an adverb.
Now, I know words like “adjective” and “adverb” make you tremble because you were traumatized by your high-school English grammar teacher. Who wasn’t? Those who serve the Gods of Grammar are formidable individuals. But gird your loins and fear not — you can do this.
An adjective is a word that modifies a noun. Nouns are persons, places, concepts, and things.
An adverb is a word that modifies a verb. Verbs are action words. It may be helpful to remember that many, but not all, adverbs end in -ly (e.g., simply, quickly, happily, poorly, effortlessly….).
Healthy is an adjective. It’s correct to say “You should eat healthy foods” or “everyone should follow a healthy diet.” Foods and diet are nouns, and nouns take adjectives.
However, it’s not correct to say “Everyone should eat healthy” or “I try to eat healthy.” Eat is a verb, and verbs take adverbs. The Gods of Grammar scowl upon those who use adjectives to modify verbs.
So what will make the Gods of Grammar smile? “Everyone should eat healthfully” or “I try to live healthily.” Healthfully and healthily are adverbs, and eat and live are verbs.
The title of this essay is “eat healthy; speak bad.” By now you should suspect that bad is an adjective, not an adverb, right? Badly or poorly would be appropriate adverbs for modifying the verb “speak.” So is well, so if you said eat healthfully, you’d be speaking well … and the Gods of Grammar would look benignly upon you.
Want more info? Here’s a useful OWL guide to adjectives vs. adverbs.
drupagliassotti @ March 10, 2008