By American English, Adverbs

backward (adjective) backwards, backward (adverb) Examples Adjective: He gave me a backward look. (Test: What kind of look?) Adverb: You put your shirt on backwards ~ You put your shirt on backward. (Test: How?) In North American English, backward (adv.) is the more preferred. In British...

Hi Hanuman (1) He is very fast. (2) He is quite fast. Both of 'very' and 'quite' are degree adverbs. But the positive intensity is different between them. 'Quite' is weaker than 'very'. I think in British English 'quite' works as a weak intensifier but in American English it works rather as a...

You are welcome, Pastel. I think you got the meaning of my post, yes. But there's a strange mix of grammatical terminology in your post! (Have I mentioned lately that you sometimes drive me crazy? ~L~) Let's take the sentence "If he ate more, he would gain weight." We agree that it is a...

Miriam, Some irony about Websters or American corporate ownership? Subtle. Here’s something from the Brits good survives as an adverb only in non-standard American English, e.g.: I'm looking after the place good—Maurice Gee, 1994. The use in feel good (which is current in BrE and AmE) is...

"The door was wide open" sounds right to my ears but I do not know if it is correct. I have been corrupted by a lifetime of input from American English speakers. I just grabbed this from the Microsoft Bookshelf CD-ROM dictionary: wide-open (wìd´o´pen) adjective 1. Completely open: a wide-open...