Call me a pedant but...

[brightlywoven]

...Is it really OK to use the word 'poorly' as an adjective?

I might, with the soundest of grammar say
That house is poorly constructed.
Considered on an hourly basis I may be poorly paid, but in some of those hours, I get to sleep!

But can I really and truly say:

His stomach has been poorly.

Poorly what? Poorly ventilated? Poorly exposed? It's an adverb, dammit! Yet for the past few nights, I have heard seemingly well educated people say sentences very similar to the above.

So how is it that this little adverb has come to be so sorely misued?

Comments

[elleblue.livejournal.com]

I was just reading the BBC news website, and came across a sad article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6537309.stm) which quotes a detective inspector using "poorly" in that sense.. it made me think of the pub conversation with you yesterday. Anyway, if I ever spot an actual journalist using it outside a quotation, I'll try and remember to drop you a note!

[(Anonymous)]

Yes well, that is an example where the horror of the story out-does the horror of the grammar!
And this quote seems to nix the idea that 'poorly' is a more mild word for 'sick', since in this case it was used to mean 'likely to be haemorrhaging from her uterus' (not to mention severely depressed)

[elleblue.livejournal.com]

Well, the guy did say "very poorly", rather than merely "poorly"..

To me, "poorly" in that sense is synonymous with "ill" or "unwell", whereas "sick" is several shades closer to "nauseous". Though I'd read "very sick" more like "very ill", so it's all a bit fuzzy.

[cealdis.livejournal.com]

I've been meaning to comment on this for quite a while.

I've been feeling poorly - to me that is a perfectly acceptable use of the word "poorly", used in the sense to mean "unwell". "Poorly paid" - another way of saying that would be "not well paid". From there it's just a short hop to "I am feeling not well". I believe the original usage of the word "poorly" in this sense was from a particular dialect, although I'm not sure of this. In any case, the word "poorly" has been used as an adjective for a sufficiently long time that it has passed into common parlance and dictionary entry. See: here (http://www.chambersharrap.co.uk/chambers/features/chref/chref.py/main?title=21st&query=poorly).

[dr-biscuit.livejournal.com]

I think the 'well paid' and 'not well' analogy suffers from adverb/adjective confusion (by which I mean muddying, not that you are confused!).

Well is has long been used both an adjective and an adverb, but as an adjective (albeit stemming from an adverb) well dates back to 1450, according to my OED. Poorly, on the other hand, is listed in the dictionary (OED and the Chambers link) as a colloquialism, and, to my mind, it's a jarring one. Maybe it's the -ly thing: my mind expects a verb to follow.

I'm probably being culturally insensitive here, but I think poorly-as-adjective sounds uneducated. In a country where people will regularly correct others for saying 'less' when 'fewer' is appropriate, and others will re-word your sentences so they don't end in a preposition, this is the kind of crap up with which we should not put!

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I think poorly-as-adjective sounds uneducated
Culturally insensitive, I'm afraid!

It isn't an education thing, I think, but class. I don't think I'd say "My stomach is poorly", which sounds like a person being euphemistic about what's actually wrong; it would always be "my stomach is [specific]" or "I was poorly yesterday - I had a dreadful stomachache"; but poorly = unwell is actually a higher social class indicator than sick = unwell (as opposed to sick = nauseous, where ill = nauseous is lower social class again). At least according to Nancy Mitford...