bad vs. badly

Whatever line you take—to use both, differentiating on some semantic basis or other, to use only feel bad and proscribe feel badly, or to follow some other line—you will find some Standard users who agree with you and others who do not. Some differentiate their choices on the basis of part of speech and conclude that since feel is a linking verb that takes a predicate adjective, bad, not badly, is called for, regardless of whether the cause is poor health or guilt feelings. Others point out that bad is a flat adverb and that therefore the -ly adverb form is wholly unnecessary and overcorrective. Still others say that badly goes with emotion, bad with physical health; and the converse is also occasionally argued too. Still others insist that the best thing to do is avoid badly entirely, and still others return to the old argument that to feel badly is to describe a flawed sense of touch. There may be some truth in each of these, but none of them is a satisfactory explanation for this pattern of Standard divided usage. Best advice: if you say and write feels bad, you may irritate fewer people than you will with feel badly, but you should be aware that this usage problem continues alive and vigorous, and neither the explanations nor the solutions being offered are likely to satisfy everyone.
~The Columbia Guide to Standard American English

Wordworm answered with the actual answer (thanks!), but in the face of that ambiguity I'm siding with you. You do something badly and you feel bad.

That's been my experience of the usage of bad/badly as adjective/adverb, respectively, but I wonder if it's a regional difference?

I feel bad. I looked bad. I smelled bad. -- adjective, much like "I feel happy."

I hurt badly. I fell badly. I sang badly. -- adverb... it modifies the verbs "hurt," "fell" and "sang."

I disagree, Ray. Incorrect information. Aren't feel, looked and smelled also verbs? Therefore bad in those sentences isnt an adjective because it isnt modifying a noun - its modifying a verb and is an adverb. No noun is being modified in the sentences I feel badly or I feel bad. What is being modified is the verb "feel". Therefore badly is actually the correct word. Isn't it it odd you would say "My stomach hurts. I really feel bad." But you would say. "Mary's father died. I really feel badly about what happened to him." In one sentence, we are accustomed to saying bad, and in the other we are accustomed to saying badly, but badly is correct in both technically.

This is what Bartleby has to say...


Bad as adjective is Standard in both attributive and predicate adjective use: This puts us in a bad light. The light is bad in here. Bad as adverb works Conversationally and Informally almost exactly as does the older badly: We all did bad [badly] on the exam. My arm was hurting bad [badly] after the game. But bad as adverb in other levels is Common English at best and is clearly not acceptable in Edited English. As an intensifier, only badly is Standard: She was badly injured in the accident. Bad and badly with linking verbs, such as look, seem, appear, and the like are discussed in the entry for FEEL BAD. See also FLAT ADVERBS.

100 years ago, people would say I feel badly or I feel poorly. I think we have just whittled the language down a bit. The adverb is badly ... the adjective is bad.

Mattie: You win the bet.

"I felt badly" means "I did a bad job of feeling."

Like, when I was at the gynecologist's office, she told me to feel this prosthetic breast to find the ball bearing inside-- which is supposed to feel like a breast cancer lump. I couldn't feel it. I felt badly.

Afterwards, I felt bad that I felt so badly.



Look, point is... you win!

From Chicago:

Adverbs do not generally follow linking verbs such as be, appear, seem, become, look, smell, taste, hear, and feel. A verb of this kind connects a descriptive word with the clause’s subject; the descriptive word applies to the subject, not the verb {he seems modest}. To determine whether a verb is a linking verb, consider whether the descriptive word describes the action or condition rather than the subject. For example, the sculptor feels badly literally describes the act of feeling or touching as not done well. But the sculptor feels bad describes the sculptor as unwell or perhaps experiencing guilt.

Yep, you win.

Karen

From dictionary.com:

Bad:
adjective:
17. regretful, contrite, dejected, or upset: He felt bad about having to leave the children all alone.

maestrowork said:

From dictionary.com:

Bad:
adjective:
17. regretful, contrite, dejected, or upset: He felt bad about having to leave the children all alone.

Click to expand...

Also, from The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, New Edition*:

Bad: Adjective: 7. Sorry; Regretful <Feels ~ about forgetting to call.>

Further, according to the same entry, badly is an adverb.


So judging from that, I would have to agree with Maestro on this.


*The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, New Edition, Copyright 2004 by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated.

I can't believe this is still going on.

Bad is both an adjective and an adverb; it began life, badly, as an adjective.

I feel bad, is correct, when the speaker is referring to an emotional or physical state.

See the Blessed American Heritage Dictionary under the Adjective heading:

14a. Being in poor health or in pain: I feel bad today.

The British National Corpus ("a 100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent a wide cross-section of current British English, both spoken and written". BNC) shows these result from a search of "feel bad" and "feel badly"

feel bad 58 appearances in 1 million words

feel badly 8 appearances in 1 million words
...........

Both are used in BrE, one more widely than the other. So, whether you win your bet or not depends on how you worded the bet and what was implied and understood by both parties.

For example, Standard English speakers, as quoted above, would allow both, depending on the speaker. So, if you and your friend have separate ideas about what Standard English is, you both lose, but don't feel too bad/badly about it. ;-)

The link for the quote above shows the best way forward, but one still has to ask why the BNC shows "feel bad" as much more frequent than "feel badly".

http://www.bartleby.com/68/80/2480.html

Ask your friend about the difference between:

I smell bad.

I smell badly.

;-)

One thing I know for sure. "I want it bad" is wrong. Because Professor Lawrence Fishborne said so, in Akeelah and the Bee.