Adverbs, again?

Cindy wanted me to write a piece for her benefit about adverbs. Cindy is convinced that adverbs, as a part of speech, are on the way out. And need to be preserved. Personally, I think adverbs are overrated. The formula for an adverb is to take a noun, verb or adjective and add -ly to the end. Of course, some adverbs are ornery and don't require an -ly at the end. Then again, some words are adverbs and some are not but they basically have the same meaning and function. For instance, "the kid ran fast." Or, "the kid ran quickly." ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?

Now, Cindy deals with grammar issues all of the time. It has become her raison detre. However, I find that a practiced lack of grammatical expertise goes over better sometimes when you are dealing with clients and other folks.

Of course, Cindy is the adverb queen. She rarely corrects my language, if not for adverb use. Now there is the over-use of the word 'thing', I suppose. I hear a little bit about that from time to time. However, Cindy is quite happy to correct our rustic language. So it is a good thing to be lasse faire with your language around Cindy so she will have something to do. Something she can enjoy.

By the by, Cindy, the quote on my calender from C. S. Lewis talks about the desire of most folks to commit 'verbicide,' which he defines as the murder of a word. Lewis talks about how people seem to prefer a word to describe approval or disapproval of things, rather than specifically describing them. In this way the words become "purely evaluative-useless synonyms for good and bad." Lewis uses the word villain to exemplify this murder of words.

The word 'Villian' came from an Old French word meaning a peasant or serf who was tied to a farm or 'villa.' Later, the word became associated with a churlish, dishonest peasant, a response, I suppose, to the association by the land-owner that his farm workers were churlish and dishonest. Finally, the word evolved to mean simply a bad person. The association with the farm was completely lost to us.

I don't know if there are any other words like this, but I suppose there are probably many.

At this point, Cindy and I will acknowledge that there are not many people who are interested enough in the derivation and evolution of words that they would want to go on and on with this discussion or, for that matter, listen or read it. Thank God Cindy and I have each other. Otherwise, we would be doing this kind of stuff all alone. One on probably one coast and one on the other.

Thankfully, Cindy and I found ourselves this morning, looking up words on the Oxford English Dictionary, checking the derivation and various versions of certain words. Just having a happy old time. Most people would just roll their eyes and ignore us. I got a little linguistic cuddle out of it instead.

By the way, I included the picture of John Stuart Mill at the top of the page just to give you something to look at while you read about language. I didn't have a picture of Cindy, the Queen of Adverbs, to grace the top. Perhaps I should have. Maybe later.