+279.+ We have just finished the study of adjectives and we have found
that adjectives are words added to nouns to qualify or to limit their
meaning. Without this class of words it would be impossible for us to
express all of our ideas, for we would be at a loss to describe the
objects about us. Adjectives enable us to name the qualities or tell the
number of the objects with which we come in contact.
The verb, we have found, expresses the action of these objects; in other
words, the verb tells what things do. So with adjectives and verbs we
can describe the objects named by the nouns and tell what they do. For
example, I may say, _Men work_. Here I have used simply a noun and a
verb; then I may add various adjectives to this and say, _Strong,
industrious, ambitious men work_. By the use of these adjectives, I have
told you about the kind of men who work; but I have said nothing about
the action expressed in the verb _work_. I may want to tell you _how_
they work and _when_ they work; _where_ they work and _how much_; in
other words, describe fully the action expressed in the verb _work_, so
I say:
The men work busily.
The men work late.
The men work well.
The men work inside.
The men work hard.
The men work here.
The men work now.
The men work more.
Words like _busily_, _hard_, _late_, _here_, _well_, _now_, _inside_,
and _more_, show _how_, _when_, _where_ and _how much_ the men work.
We could leave off these words and still have a sentence, since the
other words make sense without them, but these words describe the action
expressed in the verb.
Words used in this way are called adverbs because they are added to
verbs to make our meaning more definite, very much as adjectives are
added to nouns.
+280.+ The word adverb means, literally, _to the verb_, and one would
suppose from this name that the adverb was strictly a verb modifier, but
an adverb is used to modify other words as well. An adverb may be used
to modify an adjective; for example, we might say: _The man was very
busy_. _This lesson is too long._ Here _very_ and _too_ are added to the
adjectives _busy_ and _long_ to qualify their meaning.
+281.+ You remember in the comparison of adjectives, we used the words
_more_ and _most_ to make the comparative and superlative degrees. Here
_more_ and _most_ are adverbs used with the adjectives to qualify their
meaning. Adverbs used in this way will always answer the question, _how
much_, _how long_, etc. In the sentence, _The man is very busy_, _very_
is used to answer the question _how_ busy. And in the sentence, _The
lesson is too long_, the adverb _too_ answers the question _how_ long.
An adverb is also added to another adverb sometimes to answer the
question _how_. For example; we say, _The man works very hard_. Here the
adverb _hard_ tells _how_ the man works and _very_ modifies the adverb
_hard_, and answers the question _how hard_. So we have our definition
of an adverb:
+282.+ +An adverb is a word that modifies the meaning of a verb, an
adjective or another adverb.+
Remember that adjectives are used only with nouns or pronouns, but the
adverb may be used with a verb or an adjective or another adverb. You
remember that we had in our first lesson, as the definition of a word,
that, _a word is a sign of an idea_. The idea is a part of a complete
thought. See how all of these various words represent ideas, and each
does its part to help us express our thoughts.