Generate a random adverb from 180 English adverbs of manner, time, place, frequency and degree, filterable by word length -- for grammar practice, improv, and party games.
An adverb modifies a verb, an adjective, another adverb, or a whole clause -- answering how, when, where, how often, or to what degree. It is the loosest of the major parts of speech, and the -ly ending that gets taught as its signature covers only one of its kinds: manner adverbs like *quietly* and *deliberately*. The others rarely carry it at all. Time adverbs (soon, already, yesterday), place adverbs (upstairs, abroad, nearby), frequency adverbs (often, rarely, twice) and degree adverbs (almost, entirely, slightly) are adverbs by what they do, not by how they end -- and "friendly" and "lovely" end in -ly while being adjectives. Adverbs are also the most mobile words in an English sentence: a manner adverb can usually sit before the verb, after it, or at either end of the clause, and moving it shifts emphasis rather than meaning. That freedom is why they are so easy to overuse.
This generator draws from 180 English adverbs covering all five kinds -- manner, time, place, frequency and degree -- rather than only the -ly ones. So "quietly" and "abruptly" sit alongside "twice", "abroad", "seldom" and "almost", which is what makes the list usable for grammar teaching as well as for prompts. It is the adverb slice of the site's word bank.
Every result here is drawn using crypto.getRandomValues() -- the Web Crypto API's cryptographically secure randomness -- instead of Math.random(), so it's genuinely unpredictable, not just statistically random. Learn more.
Grammar lessons on the five adverb types and on where an adverb can legally sit in a sentence; acting and improv exercises (play the scene *this* way); the classic party game where one player performs an action in the manner of a secretly drawn adverb; writing exercises on modifying an action; and ESL practice distinguishing adverbs from the adjectives they resemble.
Generate draws one adverb at random from 180 using the site's cryptographically secure randomness, and in single-result mode never returns the word already showing. The length filter narrows the pool to short (3-4 letters), medium (5-7) or long (8+) first -- worth knowing that adverbs skew long, so the short band is a small pool. Amounts up to 100 are supported, with optional no duplicates.
A sample of what this generator can draw, spread evenly across the full list:
No, and deliberately so. Only manner adverbs reliably take -ly; the list also holds time (soon, yesterday), place (abroad, upstairs), frequency (often, twice) and degree (almost, entirely) adverbs, none of which do. A list of nothing but -ly words would teach the wrong lesson.
Because adverbs really are long words -- the -ly suffix adds two letters to an already complete adjective. Of the 180 adverbs here only a handful fit in four letters or fewer, so the short band is a genuinely small pool rather than a bug.
One player draws an adverb without showing anyone, then performs actions the rest of the group calls out -- brushing their teeth, answering the door -- in that manner, until someone guesses the word. Turn the Recent results setting down to zero first so the chips do not give it away.
No -- it is an adjective that happens to end in -ly, along with lovely, lonely, silly and ugly. Those are exactly the words the -ly rule of thumb gets wrong, which is why none of them appear in this list.
Noun · Verb · Adjective · Sentence · Idiom · Proverb