Adjectives

Adjectives are words that describe the qualities or states of being of nouns: enormous,
doglike, silly, yellow, fun, fast. They can also describe the quantity of nouns: many,
few, millions, eleven.

Adjectives Modify Nouns

Most students learn that adjectives are words that modify (describe) nouns. Adjectives
do not modify verbs or adverbs or other adjectives.

Margot wore a beautiful hat to the pie-eating contest.

Furry dogs may overheat in the summertime.

My cake should have sixteen candles.

The scariest villain of all time is Darth Vader.

In the sentences above, the adjectives are easy to spot because they come immediately
before the nouns they modify.

But adjectives can do more than just modify nouns. They can also act as a
complement to linking verbs or the verb to be. A linking verb is a verb like to feel, to
seem, or to taste that describes a state of being or a sensory experience.
That cow sure is happy.

It smells gross in the locker room.

Driving is faster than walking.

The technical term for an adjective used this way is predicate adjective.
Uses of Adjectives

Adjectives tell the reader how much—or how many—of something you’re talking
about, which thing you want passed to you, or which kind of something you want.

Please use three white flowers in the arrangement.

Three and white are modifying flowers.

Often, when adjectives are used together, you should separate them with a comma or
conjunction. See “Coordinate Adjectives” below for more detail.

I’m looking for a small, good-tempered dog to keep as a pet.

My new dog is small and good-tempered.

Degrees of Comparison

Adjectives come in three forms: absolute, comparative, and superlative. Absolute

adjectives describe something in its own right.

A cool guy

A messy desk

A mischievous cat

Garrulous squirrels

Comparative adjectives, unsurprisingly, make a comparison between two or more

things. For most one-syllable adjectives, the comparative is formed by adding the
suffix -er (or just -r if the adjective already ends with an e). For two-syllable
adjectives ending in -y, replace -y with -ier. For multi-syllable adjectives, add the
word more.

A cooler guy

A messier desk

A more mischievous cat

More garrulous squirrels

Superlative adjectives indicate that something has the highest degree of the quality in
question. One-syllable adjectives become superlatives by adding the suffix -est (or
just -st for adjectives that already end in e). Two-syllable adjectives ending in -
yreplace -y with -iest. Multi-syllable adjectives add the word most. When you use an
article with a superlative adjective, it will almost always be the definite article (the)
rather than a or an. Using a superlative inherently indicates that you are talking about
a specific item or items.

The coolest guy

The messiest desk

The most mischievous cat

The most garrulous squirrels

Coordinate Adjectives

Coordinate adjectives should be separated by a comma or the word and. Adjectives

are said to be coordinate if they modify the same noun in a sentence.

This is going to be a long, cold winter.

Isobel’s dedicated and tireless efforts made all the difference.

But just the fact that two adjectives appear next to each other doesn’t automatically
mean they are coordinate. Sometimes, an adjective and a noun form a single semantic
unit, which is then modified by another adjective. In this case, the adjectives are not
coordinate and should not be separated by a comma.

My cat, Goober, loves sleeping on this tattered woolen sweater.

No one could open the old silver locket.

In some cases, it’s pretty hard to decide whether two adjectives are coordinate or not.
But there are a couple of ways you can test them. Try inserting the word andbetween
the adjectives to see if the phrase still seems natural. In the first sentence, “this
tattered and woolen sweater” doesn’t sound right because you really aren’t talking
about a sweater that is both tattered and woolen. It’s a woolen sweater that
is tattered. Woolen sweater forms a unit of meaning that is modified by tattered.

Another way to test for coordinate adjectives is to try switching the order of the
adjectives and seeing if the phrase still works. In the second sentence, you wouldn’t
say “No one could open the silver old locket.” You can’t reverse the order of the
adjectives because silver locket is a unit that is modified by old.

Adjectives vs. Adverbs

As mentioned above, many of us learned in school that adjectives modify nouns and
that adverbs modify verbs. But as we’ve seen, adjectives can also act as complements
for linking verbs. This leads to a common type of error: incorrectly substituting an
adverb in place of a predicate adjective. An example you’ve probably heard before is:

I feel badly about what happened.

Because “feel” is a verb, it seems to call for an adverb rather than an adjective. But
“feel” isn’t just any verb; it’s a linking verb. An adverb would describe how you
perform the action of feeling—an adjective describes what you feel. “I feel badly”
means that you are bad at feeling things. If you’re trying to read Braille through thick
leather gloves, then it might make sense for you to say “I feel badly.” But if you’re
trying to say that you are experiencing negative emotions, “I feel bad” is the phrase
you want.

It’s easier to see this distinction with a different linking verb. Consider the difference
between these two sentences:

Goober smells badly.

Goober smells bad.

“Goober smells badly” means that Goober, the poor thing, has a weak sense of smell.
“Goober smells bad” means Goober stinks—poor us.

When Nouns Become Adjectives and Adjectives Become

Nouns

One more thing you should know about adjectives is that, sometimes, a word that is
normally used as a noun can function as an adjective, depending on its placement. For
example:

Never try to pet someone’s guide dog without asking permission first.

Guide is a noun. But in this sentence, it modifies dog. It works the other way, too.
Some words that are normally adjectives can function as nouns:

Candice is working on a fundraiser to help the homeless.

Adjective Definition & List of Examples
  Parts of speech
1. Adjectives
2. Adverbs
3. Conjunctions
4. Interjections
5. Nouns
6. Prepositions
7. Pronouns
8. Verbs

Adjectives are words that are used to describe or modify nouns or pronouns.
For example, red, quick, happy, and obnoxious are adjectives because they
can describe things—a red hat, the quick rabbit, a happy duck, an obnoxious
person.
Adjectives take many forms. Some common adjectives are formed when we
add a suffix to a noun or verb. For example, when we add the suffix -ful to the
noun beauty,makes the adjective beautiful, and adding the suffix -able to the
verb read makes the adjective readable. Other suffixes often used to create
adjectives include -al, -ary, -able and –ible, –ish, -ic, -ical, -less, -like, -ous, -
some, and -y. Some adjectives take the form of participles (verbs ending in -
ed or -ing), and many others are not formed from nouns or verbs but are
original in themselves—for example, close, deep, slow.
Though we usually think of adjectives as words, these parts of speech are
phrases and clauses can also function adjectivally. For example, in the
sentence, “The man wearing the hat winked at me,” the phrase wearing a
hat modifies the noun man, so it is an adjective phrase. And in the sentence,
“The man, who was carrying a book, winked at me,” who was carrying a
book is a clause modifying the noun man, so it is an adjective clause.

Adjective placement
In relation to nouns
In general, an adjective goes before the noun it modifies, it most cases it will
precede the noun, unless special emphasis on the adjective is needed. In a pair
of words, the second is usually perceived to have greater emphasis. So, in
these examples, the noun has the most emphasis:
old dog
burnt trees
And in these, the adjective is emphasized:
songs half-heard
words unspoken
Adjectives that come after the nouns they modify are postpositive adjectives.
These are rare in English, but there are a few adjectives that are always
postpositive (galore, extraordinaire), and adjectives are sometimes
postpositive when the writer wants to sound poetic.

Adjective Order
As most adjectives are placed before the noun that they are modifying, there
are some general rules for deciding in which order to list multiple adjectives.
The general guidelines are as follows:
1. Opinion or quality – such as beautiful or priceless
2. Number or quantity – such as few, an or three
3. Size – such as gargantuan or petite
4. Shape – such as square or oblong
5. Age – such as young or aged
6. Color – such as red, pink or ash
7. Origin – such as Greek or Dutch
8. Material – such as wooden or plastic
9. Qualifier – the qualifier is an adjective that denotes the item’s type or
purpose, some examples are evening bag and cooking pot
This list may vary slightly from style guide to style guide, though the
components are the same.

Demonstrative adjectives
Demonstrative adjectives are used to indicate a particular noun or pronoun in
a sentences. The demonstrative adjective is helpful when two or more people
or things are being referenced, and the writer wants to clearly pinpoint which
person or thing is meant. Some examples of the use of demonstrative
adjectives:
this dog bit my toe, but that dog licked my face
these clothes have been washed, those clothes are still dirty
With possessives
When an adjective is used to describe a noun denoting something owned, the
adjective should follow the possessive noun or pronoun:
my sister’s yellow watch
the girls’ blue shoes
her husband’s warm embrace

Possessive adjectives
The possessive adjective, also known as a possessive determiner, is used to
indicate ownership, or it may indicate a close relationship. Possessive
adjectives are whose, my, your, our, its, her, his, their. Possessive adjectives
differ from possessive pronouns. Remember, a possessive adjective modifies a
noun. A possessive pronoun is used in the place of a noun.
Introducing the subject
An adjective, especially a participial adjective, may introduce the subject of
a sentence. Such an adjective is usually set apart by a comma:
Running, she made it home in time.
Big and white, the birds land recklessly.
With such sentences, make sure the introductory adjective applies directly to
the noun it modifies. Otherwise, the adjective becomes a dangler—for
example:
Playing video games, the hours just flew by.
The subject of this sentence is the hours, and it’s not the hours that are playing
video games. Most English speakers would infer the meaning of this sentence,
but it is nevertheless poorly formed.

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Predicate adjectives
A predicate adjective is a descriptive word that, along with a linking verb,
functions as the predicate of a sentence. The underlined words in the below
examples are predicate adjectives, each applying to the subject of its sentence:
The kittens were unimpressed.
The sky was multicolored.
The stove is very clean.
The haughty bureaucrats visiting the magical village in the middle of the forest on the
second day of the Year of the Rat were distracted.

Comparative and superlative adjectives

In English, there are three degrees of adjectives:
1. Positive adjectives (e.g., rich): express a quality of an object without
comparing it to anything else.
2. Comparative adjectives (e.g., richer): compare two things or groups of
things.
3. Superlative adjectives (e.g., richest): express that one thing has a
quality to a greater degree than two or more other things.
Forming comparatives and superlatives
1. For comparing two things, the -est suffix is never appropriate, though this
rule is often broken in informal speech and writing.
2. To create a comparative or superlative adjective out of a single-syllable
adjective ending in a single vowel followed by a single consonant, double
the vowel and add the suffix—e.g., fat, fatter, fattest.
3. When the positive adjective ends in a silent e, remove the e and add the
suffix—e.g., late, later, latest.
4. Adjectives of three or more syllables use more and most instead of -
er and -est—e.g., familiar, more familiar, most familiar.
5. Some adjectives of two syllables also take more and most—
e.g., active, more active, most active. Some use the comparative and
superlative suffixes—e.g., shabby, shabbier, shabbiest. There is no easy
way to know which words fall into which category, so they must be
memorized.
6. Participles used as adjectives take more and most instead of -er and -est—
e.g, outmoded, more outmoded, most outmoded; boring, more
boring, most boring.
Irregular comparative and superlative adjectives
A few adjectives have irregular comparative and superlative forms. These are
the most common:
 bad, worse, worst
 far, farther/further, farthest/furthest
 good, better, best
 old (referring to people), elder, eldest
Participial adjectives
A participial adjective is a past participle (i.e., an -ed word) or present
participle (an -ing word) that functions as an adjective. Participial adjectives
work like any other type of adjective. For example, the participle in each of
these phrases modifies the noun that follows:
the emptied boxes
a flashing light
the undulating waves
the crashed jetliner
When a participial adjective appears before the main clause of a sentence, the
participle should come directly before the noun in the main clause. Otherwise,
it becomes a dangler. For example, this is troublesome:
Once emptied, we put the boxes in the basement.
With this construction, the participial adjective emptied applies to
the pronoun we, and we is obviously not what emptied is supposed to apply
to. One way to revise this sentence would be,
Once the boxes were empty, we put them in the basement.

Proper adjectives
A proper adjective is an adjective derived from a proper noun. They usually
begin with capital letters—for example:
Iranian embassy
Spanish galleon
Napoleonic warfare
Germanic tribes
Australian dollar
A noun modified by a proper adjective should not be capitalized. For
example, Iranian Embassy and Spanish Galleon are incorrect.
In general, it’s best to avoid using a place name as an adjective when the name
contains more than one word. You can get away with phrases like New York
minute or San Francisco fog, but, especially when the name has a comma,
using it as an adjective makes the sentence difficult—for example:
Nirvana, the Seattle, Washington band that had kicked off grunge’s breakthrough into
mainstream music, was scheduled to headline the festival . . .
Some writers put another comma after the state, creating clunky sentences
like this:
Both candidates mentioned meeting the Toledo, Ohio, man on the campaign trail, and
tied him into their economic plans. [Daily Orange]
One way to fix sentences like these is to cut out the state name—the Seattle
band, the Toledo man. If the city shares a name with other cities in other
states, consider putting the state in parentheses—Charleston (West Virginia)
man, the Columbus (Ohio) band.
1. Goldilocks was a little girl.
2. Her hair was golden.
3. She was frightened.
4. The bed was spacious.
5. The bishop is kind and
merciful.
6. The seven dwarves were
sleeping.
7. Cinderella was so beautiful.
8. The prince was attracted to
her.
9. Lito is mischievous.
10. They are industrious.