Bad is an adjective, to be used after forms of the
verb be and other linking verbs, such as become,
seem, and appear, and feel—when
feel acts as a linking verb. Linking verbs serve to
connect a descriptive word, an adjective, to its subject:
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(a)
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I was so happy, knowing that my work was appreciated.
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(b)
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I felt very happy, knowing that my work was appreciated.
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(c)
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I felt very bad, realizing
that nobody appreciated my work.
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Badly is an adverb, used to modify action verbs:
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(d)
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Leon usually plays golf superbly, but today he played
very badly.
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(e)
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Sam dances very badly
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A problem arises with verbs and sometimes that function sometimes
as linking verbs and sometimes as action verbs. Look is
one of them, as in these sentences:
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(f)
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Harriet looks sad today. She probably got bad
news about her sister.
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(g)
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Harriet looked sadly at the sick puppy, and
wished that she could help him, but knowing that she couldn抰.
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In sentence (f), looks is a linking verb. It has a
meaning similar to be. It is close in meaning to "Harriet
is sad today." An adjective—sad, in this
case—completes the sentence correctly.
In contrast, in sentence (g), looked is an action
verb; the verb looked is something that Harriet actually
did. It needs an adverb—sadly, in this case—to
describe it.
Here is another set of sentences, in which one verb is used in two
different senses. In (h) below, feel is a linking verb,
but in (i), feel is an action verb:
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(h)
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I feel bad today. I feel very sad. I received
disturbing news about my best friend.
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(i)
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I felt the material slowly and
carefully; it was exceptional silk and I wanted
to enjoy the sensual experience.
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Sentence (h) has the same structure as sentence (h)—both look
and feel act as linking verbs and need adjectives to
complete them. In sentence (f), Harriet looks sad, and appears to be
sad. In sentence (h), I feel bad, as I would feel sad, or mad, or angry,
or happy, or ...(substitute any other adjective).
In contrast, sentence (i)—like sentence (g) before it—contains
as an action verb. Feel as an action verb commonly
takes an object, and needs an adverb to describe it.
The MLA抯 Line by Line (Claire Kehrwald Cook. Houghton Mifflin,
1985) makes this distinction:
If you regret something—say, an accident in which someone was
hurt badly—you may say that you feel bad about
it. ...When feel means "to be conscious of"
or "to give a sensation of," it leads to an adjective that
modifies the subject:
We feel responsible.
The air feels cool.
If feel means "to touch" or "to
believe," an adverb is appropriate to describe the action of
the verb:
She carefully felt her way down the dark hall.
I felt strongly that he should resign.
The Grammar Exchange will feel happy if this information
enlightens your friends and family. On the other hand, we may have given
Too Much Information, and we抎 feel pretty bad if indeed
we have confused your friends and family further...
(To read about "Feel good or feel well?,"
click here.)