English Adjectives
What is an adjective?
An adjective is a word that describes or modifies a noun or pronoun in a sentence. Adjectives provide additional information about the noun or pronoun, such as its size, shape, color, origin, material, or any other attribute.
The red car is fast
The big dog is friendly
The adjective red modifies the noun car and provides information about its color. The adjective big modifies the noun dog and provides information about its size.
Used before the noun or after “to be” verb
In the example “The red car is fast,” the adjective red appears before the noun car. On the other hand, in the sentence “The car is red,” the adjective red appears after the verb is.
Can be modified by adverbs
Adjectives can also be modified by adverbs, which provide additional information about the adjective itself. For example, we have three car models with their max speed like below:
| Car model | Max speed (Km/h) |
|---|---|
| Honda Civic | 180 |
| Ford Mustang | 250 |
| Bugatti Chiron | 320 |
We can use adverbs to describe how fast the car is:
The Honda Civic is fast
The Ford Mustang is very fast
The Bugatti Chiron is extremely fast
Can be comparative or superlative
Comparative adjectives are used to compare two things, such as faster or hotter. Superlative adjectives are used to describe the highest degree of something, such as fastest or hottest.
Look at the Table 1 above, we can say:
The Ford Mustang is faster than the Honda Civic.
The Bugatti Chiron is the fastest car.
The order of adjectives
When more than one adjective comes before a noun, the adjectives are normally in a particular order. Adjectives which describe opinions or attitudes (e.g. amazing) usually come first, before more neutral, factual ones (e.g. red):
She was wearing a red amazing coat.
She was wearing an amazing red coat.
If we don’t want to emphasize any one of the adjectives, the most usual sequence of adjectives is:
| Order | Relating to | Examples: |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | opinion | unusual, lovely, beautiful |
| 2 | size | big, small, tall |
| 3 | physical quality | thin, rough, untidy |
| 4 | shape | round, square, rectangular |
| 5 | age | young, old, youthful |
| 6 | colour | blue, red, pink |
| 7 | origin | Dutch, Japanese, Turkish |
| 8 | material | metal, wood, plastic |
| 9 | type | general-purpose, four-sided, U-shaped |
| 10 | purpose | cleaning, hammering, cooking |
It was made of a strange, green, metallic material.
It’s a long, narrow, plastic brush.
Panettone is a round, Italian, bread-like Christmas cake.
Adjective patterns
To know whether a word is an adjective or not, we often need to know its meaning. But if you don’t know what it means, you can look at its suffix. Adjectives often ends with suffixes like: --ive, --ous, --ious, --ful. For example:
famous, attractive, obvious, beautiful
To know more about these suffixes, read this reference.