Can't understand a lvl 1 WR question

foreverfree
Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:55:31 +0000

There is such as a thing as surprisingly badly:
He played the song surprisingly badly.

A double adverb is okay, but you have to think about what the adverbs mean. In the original sentence, the adverb surprisingly is modifying bad/badly, which is okay, and bad/badly is modifying smelled. Think about it. Does something smell badly? Not really, that would mean it isn’t able to smell very well. The sentence is trying to say that the casserole smelled bad, as in, not good.

Oh, and smelt is fine, but in american english people usually use smelled. We save smelt for referring to ores and fish.