adverbial (adverbial)

[L. adverbial is, He is also wonderfully adverbial in his expre ions, and breaks off with a "Perhaps" and a nod of the head upon matters of the most indifferent nature. Tatler, No. 191. Adverbial modality (of a proposition), in logic , modal ity expre ed by an adverb: as, offenses nece arily come: opposed to nominal modality , which is expre ed by an adjective: as, it is nece ary that offenses should come.Adverbial phrase, or adverb-phrase, a collocation of two or more words in a sentence having conjointly the grammatical force of an adverb. The most distinct adverbial phrases consist of a preposition and a noun or a word used as a noun, with or without adjuncts, as on the whole, in very deed, by the way , by chance, of course. In this dictionary many such phrases in common use are defined under their principal words. Many elliptical phrases without a preposition are in reality adverbial, but are not usually treated as such as, he goes there every day ; this is many times larger than that. Some phrases have been made compound adverbs by coalescence, as indeed , per script a ), miscellaneous notes, memoranda, lit. writings lying before one's eyes,