Comments - Does Donald Trump smell?
Sorry! I’m an old — in every sense of the word — teacher of Latin. I love thinking about grammar, vocabulary, and the use of language in general. Of course, I commit errors pretty much every day myself, but some mistakes must be addressed.
In this piece Chris speaks of Trump’s smelling badly. The word badly is an adverb. The “-ly” is a dead giveaway. So, by saying Trump smells badly, one is saying that somehow his nose is not functioning well and his sense of smell is off.
If one wishes to say Trump exudes an unpleasant odor, one need only say, “Trump smells bad.” Bad is an adjective that describes Trump. That is true in the structure of the sentence and is true in a figurative sense about all he does. Oops! That was editorial, wasn’t it? Oh, well!
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