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In the sentence, "I am soaking wet", 'I' is the noun, 'am' is the verb, 'wet' is the adjective, and 'soaking' describes the extent of 'wet'. So would 'soaking' be classified as a "helping adjective", so to speak? Or just an adjective? Or is there a better term to describe this?

Crystal Data
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    If you require that the modifier of an adjective be an adverb, then, since wet is an adjective modified by soaking, you could call it an adverb. Or you could call it a quantifier. Or you could call it an intensifier. Or you could just call it another adjective, part of a fixed idiomatic phrase soaking wet. It's not terribly important what name you use; nobody cares and nobody agrees anyway. – John Lawler Aug 13 '18 at 02:08
  • "Soaking" derives from the participle of the verb "soak", and is used here as an adjective (a participial adjective, to be precise) to modify "wet". – BillJ Aug 13 '18 at 07:40
  • Up-voted. A good question which brought forth a good answer (comment) from Professor Lawler. – Nigel J Aug 13 '18 at 09:01
  • @BillJ If soaking is an adjective, wouldn’t that imply that wet is a noun here? I know you can go out in the wet, where it’s a noun; Dickens wrote “Make haste in out of the wet, Tom.” But I would have thought it a predicate adjective in the sample sentence. – tchrist Aug 13 '18 at 10:11
  • @tchrist see link – BillJ Aug 13 '18 at 17:19
  • @BillJ Was the link to your own user actually what you intended there? – tchrist Aug 13 '18 at 17:25
  • @tchrist I don't follow you. – BillJ Aug 13 '18 at 17:36
  • @BillJ Somehow I clicked on you not the link. :) But I don't understand that analysis. – tchrist Aug 13 '18 at 18:10
  • @BillJ The OED calls soaking “quasi-adv” in soaking wet. Which probably isn't getting us any closer to anything. – tchrist Aug 14 '18 at 01:16

1 Answers1

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One can be barely, slightly, moderately, soaking, and dripping wet, all describing a degree of wetness. As the -ly suffixes on the first three in the list suggest, this is the task of adverbs, even if by form, soaking and dripping are present participles without verbal force.

This is hardly an unusual construction: burning/scorching/piping hot, freezing cold, raving/barking mad, but deafeningly loud, exceedingly hungry.

KarlG
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  • Hmmm, were we in a sane world, we would spell the adverb as "soakingly". I like that your answer kind'a shows that. – thorr18 Aug 13 '18 at 16:05
  • @thorr18 Why? We don't spell adverbs soonly or oftenly or fastly or therely. The modernist -ly obsession is unhistorical. Present particles can be adverbs without cumbersome decorations. – tchrist Aug 13 '18 at 18:07
  • I am unaware of any obsession with ly. My opinion was just based on a feeling, not a trend. – thorr18 Aug 13 '18 at 21:41
  • Also, I wouldn't feel it looked weird if people spelled it with a hyphen. I would have the same feeling with fast-wet and fastly wet, were that a thing. – thorr18 Aug 13 '18 at 21:44
  • After years of getting rid of excess hyphens they're now turning up in all sorts of inappropriate places. Tossing one between an adverb and the adjective it modifies makes no sense, though Chicago now demands a bright-blue dress for some reason. – KarlG Aug 14 '18 at 09:56
  • It's a verb, so using it as an adverb creates a hiccup in my read, due to syntax. Without ly, the two words are actually combined to function as a single part of speech - an adjective. I don't prefer the hyphen over using ly but it explicitly shows what you are doing. If soaking were a participle, it would modify a noun or verb. I don't think of wet as a noun. It can be a verb (I wet the canvas) but then are we modifying a verb with a verb? It still doesn't make sense unless the tenses match. It'd be "soaking and wet", were they adjectives. – thorr18 Aug 14 '18 at 15:32
  • It's a verbal, not a verb, and regardless of what you sense is the illogic of it all, piping hot and soaking wet are highly idiomatic and the two -ing forms function as adverbs of degree. Others take an -ly suffix, but not these. – KarlG Aug 14 '18 at 17:44