Tao Lin
Tao Lin is the author of Leave Society (Vintage, 2021), Trip (Vintage, 2018), Taipei (Vintage, 2013), and other books. He edits Muumuu House.
Tao Lin is the author of Leave Society (Vintage, 2021), Trip (Vintage, 2018), Taipei (Vintage, 2013), and other books. He edits Muumuu House.
At some point, I started to notice I wanted to modify adverbs with a word before the adverb. Instead of writing, “He quickly ate the mango in a distracted manner,” I wanted to write, “He distractedily quickly ate the mango,” because, among other reasons, I wanted to be more concise.
I talked to some people about this a little. In 2018, for example, I tweeted this. Later, I named the new-seeming type of word “ily” because to use it you just add “ily” to the word you want to become an “ily.”
An “ily” is a word that qualifies—or adverbs—an adverb. I was going to put ilies in my next novel, and had some in it for a while (“acceleratingily increasing complexication,” “unconsciousily habitually dissimulating”), but then took them out.
More examples:
She put the large door—that we’d found and carried around—endearingily awkwardly in front of the home area.
A longily concisely written account of skydiving.