exchampionsfan

I always thought that the word 'good' in this sense is colloquial and gramatically incorrect. You should say well instead, no?

Retro

Strictly speaking that is possibly the case, although colloquial usage and grammatical correctness are ever changing. There is a subtle difference between "well" and "good" when describing how you feel. Well simply means that you are free from disease, while good implies that you are feeling better than well.

If you wanted to be really strict but describe feeling good, you'd have to restructure the sentence I guess. I have a feeling of intense pleasure.

Squijee

I don't think there's any doubt that 'feel' is a verb, it's just that is 'good' describing the manner in which you feel, or 'the feeling' you have.

Perhaps exchampionsfan's use of 'well' highlights my confusion better.

If I say 'I feel well', to call 'well' an adverb makes me think that the sentence means 'My ability to feel things is functioning well' while I clearly mean it as 'The feeling I have is one of wellbeing', in which case I'm pretty sure it's an adjective.

Retro

That is the case when feel is a simple verb - the act of feeling. When it's an intransitive verb, well describes the intransitive verb.

It is a difficult one... which I guess its why it was highlighted in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which is an awesome movie btw.

paulcl

I don't think it does (which is just as well because "feel" can't be a noun here). The question was interesting enough that I did a bit of Googling, and I came across the concept of a "linking verb". These are intransitive verbs that describe the subject's condition , so you get sentences of the form <noun> <linking verb> <adjective>. The most common linking verb is the verb "to be" - if you say "Fred is bad" then "bad" clearly describes Fred, so it's an adjective, but "is" in this case is an intransitive verb: there's no direct object, since modifiers can't be objects.
Writer's Digest has an article on the subject, which even includes "I feel bad" as an example.

Retro

If Writer's Digest says so, that's good enough for me tbh.

It is quite easy to get hung up on this kind of stuff isn't it? Ultimately, although it can be interesting if you're into language - to anyone writing, it doesn't actually matter providing it sounds correct - something that most writers have an ear for.

paulcl

Yes, not many people are going to write "I feel smartly" instead of "I feel smart", or whatever. Though just to confuse things, according to an American linguist some Americans can use "I feel badly" in cases where they're feeling sorry, regretful etc., e.g. "I feel badly about how I've treated you". To my ear that's on the borderline between acceptable and not - it doesn't leap out at me as wrong, but I wouldn't be comfortable using it.

Some British dialects use "I feel badly" too, but in that case "badly" is an adjective meaning unwell, similar to the way others use "poorly". I've seen that in some of Alan Garner's books featuring characters from rural Cheshire, but I'd forgotten about it till I read that article.

Squijee

So very true.

Retro

English is such a dynamic language. I read (history) books from say the 1950's and 1960's and the use of language and grammar are markedly different from modern ones... which would be regarded as grammatically very good.