Name: 2444 - Grammar That Breaks the Rules Part 1 Adjectives That End in “LY”
Uploaded: 2025-07-16T07:17:44.000Z
Duration: 16 min 25 s
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Lindsay is out this week, but Michelle and I are excited to bring you some fun episodes.

I'm curious, Michelle, to start us out here, do you feel like you're a pretty chill person?

I think I am chill in the way of, like, I don't get really angry at people or I don't let, like, much get me upset in that way, but I do think I'm nervous, so I don't know if that counts.

It depends on how you think about this word chill, right?

People who do get angry easily or easily frustrated, they'll say, I have no chill because I'm not super chill, but I would say you're definitely a chill person based on my interactions with you.

This is kind of slang to mean laid back, easygoing, we'll say chill, but it's true if you get nervous easily, if you worry a lot, you might feel like you're not very chill, right?

Right, but you might put off a different vibe than what you're actually feeling, which is funny.

So the reason we're talking about chill, in our Q&A, a student was talking about this word chill, right?

They said, I know I can use chill to describe someone as laid back.

And then they said, is the adverb chilly?

They said, I feel like I can add ly to any word, pretty much, and it becomes an adverb.

And it was an interesting discussion because unfortunately, no, that's not true.

If you learned that rule, add ly to an adjective and it becomes an adverb.

So for example, a lot of adjectives, well, the words that do follow the rules, first of all, because this is common, right?

Oh, adjective like soft, if we add ly, yes, that's the adverb, softly.

But again, Aubrey, as you said, it's not always the case.

And if you think of this as just this hard and fast grammar rule, you're going to find yourself in trouble because it's not always that way.

So we're going to do a three-part series here.

Make sure that you follow right here on the All Ears English podcast so you don't miss any of them.

Today in part one, we're talking about adjectives that we add ly and it becomes another adjective instead of an adverb.

And then part two, we're talking about nouns that we add ly and they become an adjective.

And then part three, we're talking about adjectives that do become an adverb when we add ly, but with an entirely new meaning, like an unexpected meaning.

And so useful because I'm sure these things can be very, very confusing if you just hear ly is adverb.

And then, yeah, it's just, it's unfortunately, it's not that simple.

And this can hurt our connections if we're taking something and thinking it's a hard and fast rule, there are no exceptions.

Then when we hear something that sounds like a mistake, it might throw us off.

Or if we're concerned about something, it always helps to know these details, to know a lot of these exceptions so that you recognize that this is something we don't need to stress out about.

So first, right, often when we add ly to an adjective, it remains an adjective, but with a different meaning.

So chill is tricky because of course we have the meaning of something being like cool, especially the verb, like I'm going to chill something in the fridge means I'm going to cool it down.

So then we have the adjective chilly, which means something is cold.

We'll usually use this to describe weather as chilly.

But what makes this makes this especially tricky is that slang meaning that chill also can mean relaxed or calm, right?

Right, right, right, so for example, he's such a chill guy and nothing bothers him.

Yes, but when we add ly, this does not become an adverb.

It actually has nothing really related to being laid back, but it also has two interesting meanings.

The first one I shared, if it's weather, right, it's getting chilly outside, grab a sweater.

And we'll also describe personalities as chilly.

There are people who I, you sometimes wonder if they're chilly, or if maybe you just don't know them.

Like sometimes you, somebody might give off a certain impression, but then you have to realize it might not actually be the reality, right?

We also use cold to describe people, right?

Someone might come off as cold or chilly if they're not extremely friendly, or maybe their facial expressions aren't extremely friendly, but that's a good point, Michelle, that this can actually hurt connection if you assume someone is cold, chilly, unfriendly, when that's just their face.

And if you, you know, start a conversation, you might find that they're super warm and friendly.

Yeah, we're going to share a few of the most common examples here of similar words where it's an adjective without ly, and then we add ly, and it's a new meaning, but still an adjective.

Okay, so sick, this is an adjective to mean maybe ill or nauseated.

So, um, I felt sick after that roller coaster.

Actually, Aubrey, recently I took my daughter to like a little kids amusement park, and they had the teacups type, one of those types of rides.

And then I went on one of them, and I was okay.

And the second one, there was just this point in the ride where I felt, hmm, I don't like this, but I was okay.

And I don't know about you, but when that happens to me, I'm like done for a while.

If I feel sick after the teacups, it's going to be hours before I feel like going on another ride.

It also means something is really cool or impressive.

I've never been able to backflip like that if someone does a cool backflip.

So this is slang as well, which makes it doubly tricky.

Sometimes you're not sure you have to know the context to know.

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2444 - Grammar That Breaks the Rules Part 1 Adjectives That End in “LY”

assume

absolutely

awesome

extremely