He was breathing heavy (adjective instead of adverb?)

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Hi,

Could you please take a look at this sentence:

He was breathing heavy seething with anger.

Why is breathing followed by an advjective instead of an adverb?

Thanks,
Torsten[YSaerTTEW443543]

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2

Hi Torsten

That’s not uncommon in informal spoken English.
It’s a bit like saying "He was driving real slow." That wouldn’t be particularly unusual either (colloquially).

3

Hi Amy,

Many thanks for your quick response. The interesting thing is that this sentence was used to describe a situation. I mean, it was not part of dialog. Why would an author use informal spoken English when he is describing a scene in a story?[YSaerTTEW443543]

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4

.
Maybe the author wanted to write in a style that didn’t sound overly formal.

“Heavy breathing” is a common collocation, so possibly it was just a “slip of the pen” or a typo. Or maybe the grammar was “corrected” by MS Word… 8)

What sort of book is it?

5

Hi Amy,

It’s a thriller, “The Abduction” by James Grippando.[YSaerTTEW443543]

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6

Hi,

I am just getting interested and curious about ‘heavy’. Is there any slight possibility that ‘heavy’ = ‘heavily’ (as an adverb) here? Sorry if it’s totally unrelated.

Haihao

7

Hi Haihao

Yes, in Torsten’s sentence it appears that ‘heavy’ should have been ‘heavily’. The sentence also seems to be in need of some kind of punctuation or the word ‘and’ between ‘heavy’ and ‘seething’. So, it’s also possible that the sentence just has some typos.

My original point was that in informal spoken English, adjectives are sometimes not converted to adverbs, and the adjectives function as adverbs. In my example “He was driving real slow” there are two adjectives that have not been changed to adverbs. In other words, “He was driving real slow” = “He was driving really slowly.”

Amy