Adjectives that end in -ly can make awkward adverbs—for example, friendlily, likelily, livelily, deadlily, cowardlily, lovelily, jollily, uglily, chillily, and so on. Spell-check may catch some of these adverbs (although ours allows friendlily, jollily, and chillily), but that doesn’t mean the words are technically incorrect.
Still, most writers find ways around using the awkward words. For example, instead of writing she walked lovelily, one might instead write, she walked in a lovely manner, she looked lovely when she walked, she walked with loveliness, and so on.
Writers adverbize -ly adjectives so infrequently that we can hardly find any examples on the web. Here are just a couple:
Instead she added, just a little more chillily … [Independent]
We should talk friendlily and frankly with our partners in Turkey. [Today's Zaman]
The infrequency of such examples suggests that -lily adverbs aren’t generally considered acceptable, even if they are technically correct.
There are a few -ly adjectives that also function as adverbs. With these, the awkward ending isn’t an issue. A few of the most common ones are daily, early, weekly, monthly, hourly, stately, timely, nightly, and yearly.
