adverbs - Is "fastly" a correct word?


Slow has the adverb slowly. I tend to use fastly as the adverb for fast.


However, it is underlined in most spell checkers I use, which makes me wonder about the existence of this word.


Is fastly a correct word? If not, what should be used instead, and why is that different from its antonym?



Answer



There is no need for "fastly" because "fast" is both an adjective and an adverb. So, "I ran fast" is completely correct.


The existence of "fast" as an adverb does not preclude the future development of a word "fastly", but it does hinder it.


One might note that the corresponding adjective "slow" does take the -ly suffix, but this has no impact on the behavior of "fast". (There is also no real reason why, for example, we have warm/warmth, but cool/coolness. Semantically related things sometimes have similar morphological patterns, and sometimes not.)



One interesting thing worth noting (that was brought up in a comment by Jimi Oke) is that there are cases of adjectives with identical adverbs that also have an -ly form; for example, we have "right" and "wrong" as adjectives and adverbs, but we also have "rightly" and "wrongly". In such cases, the -ly form has carved out its own semantic niche; the adverb "right" and the adverb "rightly" cannot be used interchangeably in every situation. I can say "turn right" and "rightly so", but I can't exchange them in either sentence.


With normal adjectives that cannot become adverbs without -ly, usually the -ly just transparently makes the adjective adverbial — it doesn't have its own separate semantic nuances (e.g. "quickly" simply means "in a quick manner").


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