Why 'I feel bad' is better than 'I feel badly'

I’m not a sports fan. I’ve been to exactly two baseball games in my life, neither by choice, and one was the Dodgers’ worst-ever loss. But years ago a friend got me hooked on the baseball term “swing and a miss.” It works beautifully in any situation in which someone tries to accomplish something, like hitting a baseball, and fails.

That’s the term that comes to mind when I hear people say, “I feel badly.” They’re trying to accomplish something, in this case perfect grammar, but they strike out. Grammar swing and a miss.

In this case, a home run would take the form “I feel bad.” That’s the more grammatical option. But as with so many things in English, trying too hard backfires.

We’re all taught that adverbs modify verbs, which is often true. And we’re all taught that adverbs are words that end in “ly,” which is also often true. But in fact, adverbs have a larger CV than we were taught. Besides describing actions, adverbs also describe adjectives. Think: a really beautiful sunset. Adverbs even answer questions like “when” and “where” in sentences like “I’ll see you outside tomorrow.”  In this case, both “outside” and “tomorrow” are adverbs. (Look them up in the dictionary and you’ll see that they are both adverbs in certain uses.)

Still, the basic idea that “ly” adverbs modify actions is correct: He thought about it carefully. We slowly entered the building. I sing badly.

If that’s all you know about adverbs, it will serve you well in most situations. But not in the case of “I feel bad.” That’s because there’s a class of verbs that aren’t actions. Copular verbs, or more commonly, linking verbs, refer to states of being or the senses. The most common linking verb is “be.” And linking verbs are followed not by adverbs but by adjectives.

If that sounds advanced, it’s not. You already get this on an instinctive level. For example, have you ever said, “Carla is nicely” instead of “Carla is nice”? Have you ever said, “Tyler seems angrily” instead of “Tyler seems angry”? How about “This coffee tastes terribly” instead of “This coffee tastes terrible”?

No. Because you see that the last word in each of these sentences isn’t modifying the verb. It’s modifying the subject of the sentence: a noun or pronoun. In “Carla is nice,” you use the adjective “nice” to describe the noun “Carla.” That’s very different from saying something like “Carla fits into our group nicely.” In that case, you use an adverb to describe the action of fitting in.

It's not always so clear, though. The verb “feel” seems like it should be an action verb. In fact, it often is. “I feel the effects of caffeine very quickly.” But when you’re talking about empathy or pity, as in “I feel bad for him,” the verb “feel” functions as a linking verb. That’s why the adjective “bad” is the correct form here.

If it helps, consider “I feel sorrily for him.” The adverb just doesn’t work in place of “sorry.”

When we’re not policing our own speech, a lot of us say “I feel bad” without thinking about it. But when we do think about it because we really want to use proper grammar, we may lean back on those old adverb lessons and use “badly” instead.

The good news is that, if you say, “I feel badly,” you’re not wrong — technically. It’s an established form defended by many English language experts, and it’s allowed by dictionaries. But if you were swinging for the fences (did I use that right?) of good grammar, “I feel bad” is a homerun.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2026 at 3:32 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.