When Grammar Meets Feelings: Choosing Bad or Badly

It’s a question many people have probably asked themselves at some point or another: Do I feel “bad,” or do I feel “badly”? Neither option sounds blatantly wrong, but which is technically correct? Before I tell you, try substituting “bad” and “badly” with another adjective and adverb: say, for instance, the adjective “excited” and the adverb “excitedly.” Now tell me which of the two is correct: “I feel excited” or “I feel excitedly”? You wouldn’t say that you feel “excitedly” about the start of the semester, that you feel “responsibly” for the outcome of an event, or that you feel “sadly” about the fact that rain ruined your weekend plans. The adjectives “excited,” “responsible,” and “sad”—not the adverbs “excitedly,” “responsibly,” and “sadly”—are correct in these instances.

And, so, you can certainly feel “bad” when something doesn’t go your way, but some grammarians contend that it isn’t correct to say that you feel “badly.” The reason? According to Claire Cook, “When feel means ‘to be conscious of’ or ‘to give a sensation of,’ it leads to an adjective that modifies the subject: We feel responsible, The air feels cool. If feel means ‘to touch’ or ‘to believe,’ an adverb is appropriate to describe the action of the verb: She carefully felt her way down the dark hall, I feel strongly that he should resign” (178). A person might feel “strong” after going to the gym, while another might feel “strongly” that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. In the first instance, feel is being used in the first sense outlined by Cook and thus necessitates an adjective, “strong,” which modifies the subject. In the second instance, feel means “to believe”; therefore, it requires an adverb, “strongly,” which modifies the verb.

In instances where feel is paired with an adjective, it functions as a specific type of verb known as a “linking verb.” Unlike action verbs, which connect the subject of a sentence to an action (e.g., “We read the book,” “I wrote the paper”), linking verbs connect the subject to a word that describes the subject (e.g., “You look tired,” “He feels emotional”). According to Merriam-Webster, “[W]ith most linking verbs, we would consider the use of an -ly adverb to be an error: ‘smell delicious’ but not ‘smell deliciously’; ‘taste sweet’ but not ‘taste sweetly.’ Similarly, ‘feel sadly’ or ‘feel angrily’ would be considered ungrammatical. Badly, when used with feel, is an exception to this rule, and is standard” (“Is”).

In the end, it’s not a question with a clear-cut answer. And it’s unlikely that anyone would raise a flag were you to say that you feel “badly” about something. Still, it’s important to have all the facts—and that’s something you can feel good about.

Works Cited

Cook, Claire Kehrwald. Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing. Modern Language Association of America, 1985.

“Is It ‘Feel Bad’ or ‘Feel Badly’?” Merriam-Webster, 2024, www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/do-you-feel-bad-or-feel-badly.