Adverb of a Verb: Why Verbs Don’t Have Adverb Forms
If you have searched for “the adverb of walk” or “the adverb of give“, you have run into one of the most common false steps in English grammar. There is no adverb of walk. There is no adverb of give. Verbs do not have adverb forms at all — and once you see why, the question you were really asking becomes much easier to answer.
Why the question feels reasonable
English does turn one part of speech into another, and it does it often enough that you learn to expect it. Most adjectives convert to adverbs by taking -ly:
| quick (adjective) | → | quickly (adverb) | She is quick. / She writes quickly. |
| careful (adjective) | → | carefully (adverb) | He is careful. / He drives carefully. |
| clumsy (adjective) | → | clumsily (adverb) | A clumsy child. / He fell clumsily. |
Because that pattern is so regular, it is natural to assume every word has an adverb hiding inside it. But the pattern works on adjectives. A verb is not a word that can become an adverb, because the two do completely different jobs: the verb is the action, and the adverb describes the action. A verb cannot describe itself any more than a person can stand on their own shoulders.
What you were actually asking
When someone searches for “the adverb of run”, what they almost always want is one of these two things:
1. Which adverbs go with this verb?
This is a real and useful question. Every verb attracts a particular family of adverbs, because the adverbs have to make sense with the action:
| walk | slowly, quickly, briskly, quietly, barefoot, together |
| grow | rapidly, steadily, slowly, gradually, wild |
| give | generously, freely, reluctantly, willingly, away |
| study | hard, diligently, abroad, together, late |
| appear | suddenly, briefly, unexpectedly, occasionally |
| marry | young, secretly, quietly, well |
| declare | publicly, formally, boldly, flatly |
| participate | actively, fully, willingly, regularly |
Notice that several of those are not -ly words at all. Hard, well, young, together and abroad are adverbs in these sentences even though they do not look like it — which is the second reason the “-ly means adverb” rule leads people astray.
2. Is there an adjective form I can convert?
Sometimes there is, and this is where the confusion has a grain of truth in it. Many verbs produce participles, and participles behave like adjectives. Once you have the adjective, the usual -ly rule applies again:
| verb | participle (adjective) | adverb |
| tire | tired / tiring | tiredly / tiringly |
| excite | excited / exciting | excitedly / excitingly |
| hesitate | hesitant | hesitantly |
| determine | determined | determinedly |
So the chain runs verb → adjective → adverb, never verb → adverb directly. And it does not work for every verb: walk, give and grow have no adjective form of this kind, which is exactly why no adverb comes out the other end.
Where the adverb goes
Once you have chosen an adverb, position matters more in English than most learners expect. The three usual slots are:
| Front | Slowly, she opened the door. | Emphasises the manner. |
| Mid | She slowly opened the door. | Neutral, most common in writing. |
| End | She opened the door slowly. | Neutral, most common in speech. |
The one position to avoid in English is between the verb and its direct object. She opened slowly the door is wrong, even though the equivalent is perfectly normal in Spanish, French and several other languages — which is why it is one of the most persistent errors among learners.
Common mistakes
| Incorrect | Correct | Why |
| He walks slow. | He walks slowly. | Slow is the adjective; the verb needs the adverb. (Slow does work as an adverb in fixed phrases like go slow.) |
| She studies hardly. | She studies hard. | Hardly does not mean “in a hard way” — it means “barely”. This one reverses your meaning. |
| They participated activly. | They participated actively. | Keep the -e before -ly when the adjective ends in a consonant + e. |
| He gave generous. | He gave generously. | The word is describing how he gave, so it must be an adverb. |
Quick practice
Choose the correct word, then check yourself against the answers below.
- The plant grew (rapid / rapidly) after the rain.
- She speaks English (good / well).
- They married (young / youngly).
- He answered the question (hard / hardly) — he barely said a word.
- The mayor declared the results (public / publicly).
Answers: 1. rapidly 2. well 3. young 4. hardly 5. publicly
Frequently asked questions
Is there really no adverb of any verb?
Correct. If a dictionary lists an adverb next to a verb, the adverb has been formed from a related adjective or participle, not from the verb itself.
What about words like “quickly” that seem to belong to “quicken”?
Quickly comes from the adjective quick. Quicken is a separate verb built from the same root. They are relatives, not parent and child.
So how do I answer a homework question that asks for “the adverb of walk”?
The honest answer is that the question is built on a mistake, and the useful answer is to give an adverb that modifies walk — slowly, quickly, quietly. If it is a school worksheet, that is almost certainly what is wanted.
In short
Adjectives have adverb forms. Verbs have adverbs that go with them. If you came here looking for the adverb of a particular verb, what you need is not a conversion but a choice: pick the adverb that describes the action the way you mean it, and put it before the verb or after the object — never in between.
