Tom in Glendale, Calif., wrote with an interesting question about a newspaper headline that mentioned “well-paying jobs.”
“That phrase looks odd and awkward to me,” Tom wrote. “They mean good-paying or high-paying. No one’s girlfriend is said to be ‘well-looking,’ but then there’s well-lit, well-groomed, well-paid. Is there a rule or is it just what sounds OK?”
The truth is that what sounds OK usually is OK. After all, even the fussiest grammar rules are based on usage. But to understand why “well-paying” is correct, we can do better than that by analyzing the grammar of this term.
In “a well-paying job,” the compound is working as an adjective. It’s like a good job or an easy job, the stuff before “job” is adding description to the noun.
However, because “well-paying” is made of two words, it’s a little more complicated. “Well” and “paying” have grammatical relationships not just with the noun but with each other, too. And when you understand how these two words relate to each other, you can see why “well-paying” is indeed preferable to “good-paying.”
Think about the term “a recently married couple.” Here, “married” is functioning as an adjective. (Yes, it’s derived from a verb. But participle forms of verbs can be adjectives, as in “a missed opportunity” and “the wronged party” and “a knowing look.”)
So “married” is an adjective modifying the noun “couple.” And what is that word before it, “recently,” doing? It’s modifying the adjective “married.” One of an adverb’s main jobs, besides describing actions, is describing adjectives. So “recently” is an adverb modifying the adjective “married.”
“A well-paying job” works the same way. The word that modifies “paying” is functioning adverbially. So the adverb form, “well,” is more proper than the adjective “good.”
That’s also why “well-lit” and “well-groomed” are correct and “good-lit” and “good-groomed” are awful. “Lit” and “groomed” are participles functioning as adjectives, so an adverb like “well” sounds more natural than an adjective like “good” to modify them.
So how do we explain the “good” in “She is good-looking”? That’s a little more complicated. The simplest answer is that “good-looking” is an established term, made official by having its own entry in the dictionary. But that’s not the only reason it’s correct. It’s grammatical, too.
How is that possible? It’s because “good-looking” is grammatically different from “well-paying.” Think of the sentences “Jessica seems nice,” “We are happy,” “He appears upset,” “Mary looks angry.” Notice how, in each of the sentences, the word that follows the verb is an adjective: nice, happy, upset and angry, as opposed to an adverb like nicely, happily, etc.
That’s because some verbs, called “copular” or “linking” verbs, take adjectives and not adverbs. The modifiers that come after them aren’t describing action. They’re referring back to the subject — a noun. That is, in “Mary looks angry,” we’re not describing the manner in which Mary is looking at something. We’re describing Mary. That’s the nature of copular verbs.
“She looks good” works the same way. We’re not talking about the manner in which she examines something with her eyes. We’re talking about her. So “she is good-looking” is grammatically like “She looks good.”
Could you say “She is well-looking”? Technically, yes. But it would change your meaning. It would either mean that you’re using the adjective form of “well,” the definition that means “in good health.” Or it would mean that you’re trying to describe how well she examines something.
Both those meanings are quite a stretch. Which is why “She is good-looking” is proper, even as “That job is well-paying” is, too.
--
JUNE CASAGRANDE is author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.
