Here's a doozy! This boobery demonstrates a linguistic blight that is far too common. We have a tendency to hypercorrect with adverbs, notably with popular phrases like "I feel badly about..." This is incorrect. Badly is an adverb that modifies only a verb -- in this case "to feel." So if one feels badly, perhaps one has had their hands mashed up in a meat grinder, leading to an inability to feel things well. In the case of our boobery, if old people smell badly, then they do a bad job of smelling -- perhaps their olfactory systems have seen too much wear'n'tear. In both cases, the correct choice would be an adjective instead of an adverb -- bad instead of badly. Here's why:
Verbs come in all sorts. The verb "to smell" can be transitive -- it can take an object, as in "I smell the skunk" --, but it can also be an intransitive linking verb. At their base, linking verbs are like an equals sign between two parts. The most common linking verb is "to be." One could essentially replace the conjugation of "to be" with an equals sign without changing meaning -- "I am bold" could be expressed as I = bold. "You are a ninny" could be expressed as you = ninny. Another way of thinking of linking verbs is that the second part (what comes after the verb) defines or names the first (what comes before the verb). While there has to be either an adjective or a noun after a verb of this type, these are not objects. They are predicate adjectives or nouns (bold / a ninny). So -- "old people smell bad" indicates that geriatrics have a bad smell whereas "old people smell badly" indicates that their noses are not up to snuff. Likewise, "she feels bad about the accident" indicates that she (her feelings) are defined as bad whereas "she feels badly about the accident" does really make any sense at all. If we use the adverb "well" instead of "badly," this error is even more glaring. We wouldn't say that the soup smells well or that she feels well about her decision. So why use badly in either case?
This is why the following conversation (and its many variations) is so frustrating to me:
Someone: How are you?
Me: I'm good.
Someone: Oh -- aren't you like an English teacher? Don't you mean "well?" (Snark snark snark...)
Me: No -- I mean to link myself with the predicate adjective of "good." Nouns are modified by adjectives.
Someone: What?
Verbs come in all sorts. The verb "to smell" can be transitive -- it can take an object, as in "I smell the skunk" --, but it can also be an intransitive linking verb. At their base, linking verbs are like an equals sign between two parts. The most common linking verb is "to be." One could essentially replace the conjugation of "to be" with an equals sign without changing meaning -- "I am bold" could be expressed as I = bold. "You are a ninny" could be expressed as you = ninny. Another way of thinking of linking verbs is that the second part (what comes after the verb) defines or names the first (what comes before the verb). While there has to be either an adjective or a noun after a verb of this type, these are not objects. They are predicate adjectives or nouns (bold / a ninny). So -- "old people smell bad" indicates that geriatrics have a bad smell whereas "old people smell badly" indicates that their noses are not up to snuff. Likewise, "she feels bad about the accident" indicates that she (her feelings) are defined as bad whereas "she feels badly about the accident" does really make any sense at all. If we use the adverb "well" instead of "badly," this error is even more glaring. We wouldn't say that the soup smells well or that she feels well about her decision. So why use badly in either case?
This is why the following conversation (and its many variations) is so frustrating to me:
Someone: How are you?
Me: I'm good.
Someone: Oh -- aren't you like an English teacher? Don't you mean "well?" (Snark snark snark...)
Me: No -- I mean to link myself with the predicate adjective of "good." Nouns are modified by adjectives.
Someone: What?
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