For most native speakers, this is usually a pretty easy question to answer, as even though the two concepts are quite similar, they’re still pretty distinct.
Fun or Funny?
adjectives
Don’t be Afraid…
Yes, it’s Hallowe’en again! Time to have a look at an appropriately spooky word. But first, a challenge:
Is Donald Trump the Humblest or the Most Humble Person in the World?
There may be one advantage to Donald Trump being President of the United States (only one!), though it’s quite a selfish one: he certainly gives me a lot of food for thought. Sometimes I really don’t want to write about him, or even think about him, or exist in the same universe as him, but he can be hard to ignore, particularly when he demonstrates his unusually dysfunctional relationship with the English language.
Last week he gave us another addition to the evergrowing list of did-he-actually-just-say-that? moments:
More Real or Realer?
The dirt on his hands, his stale clothes and declining hygiene, his fading interest in food and drink, all helped to expose a more real vision of himself. – J.G. Ballard, High Rise (1975).
I was struck by the above passage recently while reading the book, specifically the bolded part – more real. I asked myself: why isn’t it correct to say realer?
The Return of the Most Winningest
I saw the following today, on the internet, on Reddit, while taking a brief pause from work:
“How Does he Smell?” “Terrible!” or: Is it “Feel Bad” or “Feel Badly?”
Or should that be terribly? This is something that can be confusing for native speakers, and I’ve noticed recently more and more people getting into tangles with this area of language. Which ironically, I think, is due to people having more knowledge about language than before. First of all though, what aspect of language are we talking about here?
Hip Hop and the Big Bad Wolf
Earlier week I learned something new about the English language, which isn’t something I get to say often. It was this:
English-Language Thoughts 