By Chinua Asuzu
As you already know, not every word ending in -ly is an adverb.
Not every word that looks like an adverb is one.
The following words are not adverbs, but mostly adjectives.
A few, like melancholy and orderly, are nouns as well.
Contumely is an out-and-out noun.
These are mostly adjectives, even if a few may equally belong to other word classes:
beggarly, burly, chilly, comely, costly, cowardly, curmudgeonly, curly, dastardly, deadly, deathly, disorderly, early, earthly, elderly, friendly, frilly, ghastly, ghostly, godly, goodly, grisly, heavenly, hilly, holy, homely, jolly, kingly, leisurely, likely, lively, lonely, lovely, lowly, manly, masterly, melancholy, niggardly, oily, orderly, otherworldly, prickly, poorly, portly, prickly, princely, queenly, scholarly, seemly, shapely, sickly, silly, slovenly, sly, sprightly, timely, ugly, ungainly, unlikely, unmanly, unruly, unseemly, untimely, unworldly, womanly,
worldly.
Meanwhile…
“Effective writing does not use legalese. It’s clear and simple. Bloated writing stuffed with medieval jargon and convoluted sentences that go on forever provokes mistrust. It looks like you’re hiding something because you’re not just saying it straight out.
Legalese can even introduce confusion. Plain language is straightforward, uses terms of art where it should, and says what it means.” Gary Kinder, ‘How to Write the Perfect Brief,’ http://wordrake.com
