I’m going to write briefly about verbs in English, because I got corrected again in my response to the question, “How are you feeling?”

There are two main types of verbs in the English language: action verbs, and copula. The action verbs are the verbs most of us learn about in our early studies of grammar, with teachers telling us something akin to “nouns are things, verbs do things, adjectives affect nouns, adverbs affect verbs.” Something which is, strictly speaking, true.

Adverbs modify action verbs. That’s true, and important to recognize. If someone says, “I ran over here as fast as I could,” they have formed an improper sentence. Ran is an action verb, fast is an adjective. The two don’t go together. One must run as quickly as one can. That’s all well and good, and I can be something of a fascist myself when it comes to correcting people on this improper usage.

The problem comes when one attempts to generalize that rule improperly to handle copula verbs as well. Copula verbs are also known as linking verbs, because they serve to link the subject of the sentence with its predicate. The predicate, therefore, is not modifying the verb itself, it is modifying the subject. Often the term copula is used as a synonym for the biggest copula verb in English, to be, but other copula verbs include to get, to feel, to seem, and to become. Some other verbs that are nearly always used as action verbs may sometimes be copula verbs, such as appear in the sentence, “He appears unhappy.”

Feel as copula verb is where the most common miscorrection occurs. When someone asks, “How are you feeling?” the word feeling is a copula verb. It is therefore only appropriate to respond with an adjective form, not an adverbial form. If I reply with the fragment, “Bad” it is proper. If I were to respond, “Badly” I would be twisting their sentence to an entirely different meaning from what they intended. By responding that “I am feeling bad”, using an adjective, I am indicating I am modifying the pronoun (I). If I were to respond, as many will correct you, that “I am feeling badly”, I am using an adverb and must be directly modifying the verb itself, indicating it is being used as an action, not a copula, verb. In this sense, I am saying, “My capacity for tactile sensation is in a poor state,” rather than, “I feel like hell.”

Grammatical clarity is excellent, and I think a wonderful goal to strive towards — in our quest to speak properly, however, we must not over-generalize rules and run the risk of making our grammar even worse. So for God’s sake, run quickly, get somewhere slowly, dance happily, but if you feel bad, don’t feel badly, if you look sad, don’t feel sadly, and if you smell awful, don’t smell awfully.

One final word should be said about good and well in relation to the to be copula. In this case, both good and well are correct, but good is understood to refer to an overall state of well being, whereas well refers specifically to one’s physical state of being.