James Brown sang “I feel good…knew that I would.” Shouldn’t he have said “I feel well” instead? No, it would have destroyed the rhyme scheme. And “well” would have been wrong. This one is tricky because “good” is an adjective; “well” is an adverb. And you may recall that adverbs modify verbs (as in “speak slowly”). So it certainly looks as if the adverb “well” would be the right choice to modify the verb “feel.” But here’s a quirk: verbs relating to the senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste) need adjectives to modify them. For example, “It looks good,” “It tastes good,” “It smells good,” are all correct. Thus, “I feel good” is also correct. So James Brown gets an A for grammar.

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Posted Thursday, March 06, 2008