Q. Is it grammatically accurate to say something like, “I’m going to dress warmly”? My hunch is no, because “dress warmly” means that I’ll be smiling and emotionally warm as I’m dressing, given that “warmly” modifies the verb “dressing.” If all that is true, then what I’m unsure about is how to fix the sentence. Can you suggest any good alternatives besides writing around it like so: “I’m going to dress in warm clothing”?
A. If you say you’re going to dress warmly, that means you’re going to put on warm clothes, whereas addressing someone warmly would mean greeting that person with affection or kindness. Words often have more than one sense depending on how they’re used; according to Merriam-Webster (among other dictionaries), warmly is no exception.
Or maybe you’re thinking of the feel badly versus feel bad principle. That’s different, though, because unlike dress, the word feel can be a linking verb. Linking verbs reflect the predicate back onto the subject—as when you feel bad, where the adjective bad modifies the pronoun you. But when you feel badly, you are literally not good at feeling something (either physically or emotionally). See also CMOS 5.175.