Or hardly working?
So, are you working hard right now?
Whether you are or not, we have a question: what is the word hard in that sentence?
It's an adverb – it gives more information about the way you are working.
But hard can also be adjective: it's a hard job, that bed is hard.
Hard is an example of a word which is both an adjective and an adverb. Other examples are:
In that case, what does hardly mean? Actually, it's not connected to hard – it means barely, only a little. So if you're hardly working, you're not working very much at all!
Similarly, these are examples of adverbs which don't always mean what you think:
Note 1
After sense verbs like look, taste, smell, feel and sound, we often use the adjective form, as if it was an adverb:
Note 2
Also, it's good to remember that not all words ending in –ly are adverbs. For example:
