Read in younger son’s physics homework the other day: “The bench moves you fastly to the start and then slowly back through the…”
Nothing to do with hadrons or black holes, fortunately.
Me: “There’s no such word as ‘fastly’.” 😆
Him: “Yes there is. What’s wrong with fastly?” 😎
Me: “The word’s ‘fast’. But that doesn’t really work there; you can use ‘rapidly’ or ‘quickly’ but not fastly.” 🙄
Him: “‘Slow’ and ‘slowly’ are OK so what’s wrong with ‘fastly’?” 😛
Me: “It’s just not English. Perhaps the DofE had a point when he asked if you could read and write.” 😈
The conversation progressed on those lines. I eventually won.
It reminded me, though, of some other ‘…ly’s and various dislikes. Continue reading