Adjectives are words that describe nouns and pronouns: a red car, a happy dog, a small house. This article explains the types of adjectives, the 3 ways to use them, compound and comparative adjectives, and why English adjectives never change to agree with their noun.
Adjectives are one of the parts of speech, or word classes, of English. From a pure sentence-building point of view, they are less important than other word classes: a sentence works without them. But adjectives make writing, and life in general, a lot more colorful.
What are adjectives?
Adjectives describe other words, mainly nouns, pronouns, and the phrases built around them. They modify these words by adding detail and information. A sentence does not need an adjective the way it needs a noun and a verb, but adjectives do a lot to convey a mood, a quality, or the importance of something. The most common things adjectives describe are quantity, quality, size, age, shape, and color, but there are others as well:
- Quantity or number: three, fifteen, dozen
- Quality: beautiful, amazing, incredible, boring
- Size: little, small, large, huge, tiny, narrow, wide
- Age: old, young, new, antique
- Shape: round, heart-shaped, circular
- Color: green, white, black, violet
- Material: silk, wooden, woolen
- Proper adjectives, made from proper nouns and written with a capital letter: French, European, Shakespearean
Adjectives are an open word class. Unlike the closed word classes, such as prepositions, an open class takes in new words all the time.
Words like the, an, this, and your used to be classified as adjectives as well. Today, most grammars call them determiners. (Your and its relatives are also known as possessive adjectives; see possessive adjectives and pronouns.)
3 ways to use an adjective
Adjectives can be used in different ways. The 3 main ones are attributive, predicative, and nominal.
Attributive adjectives
An attributive adjective stands directly before the noun it modifies. This is the most common use of an adjective in English.
This is one happy dog.
Predicative adjectives
A predicative adjective does not stand right before the noun or pronoun it modifies. It is linked to it by a linking verb (also called a copula), such as is, seems, or becomes.
Marcel and Linda had a baby boy. They are so happy about it.
Nominal adjectives
A nominal adjective works as a noun, usually after the. It stands for a whole group of people: the rich, the poor, the young, the elderly.
The young often have more energy than the old.
When you compare two things and leave out the noun to avoid repeating it, English usually needs one after the adjective:
They watched two movies yesterday. André liked the sad movie, but Becky preferred the happy one.
Compound adjectives
A compound adjective joins two or more words, often with a hyphen, to describe one noun: part-time, well-behaved, 1-year-old. It is important to tell a compound adjective apart from an adverb followed by an adjective.
Stephanie is only a part-time employee.
Raphael has an amazing 1-year-old shepherd.
In the second example, amazing is not part of the compound. It is a second adjective that also modifies the noun shepherd. Likewise, in the next example, very is not part of the compound. It is an adverb that modifies the adjective.
The kids were very well-behaved at school today.
An adverb that ends in -ly never takes a hyphen: a highly skilled worker. The guide to the hyphen has the full rules.
Comparative and superlative adjectives
Most English adjectives can be compared: something can be older than something else, or the oldest of all. Short adjectives usually add the suffixes -er and -est. Most adjectives with three syllables or more use more and most instead: more beautiful, most beautiful.
Percy is a very old dog, but my cat Michael is even older. And I am definitely the oldest of us.
Some adjectives form these comparisons irregularly:
I am very good at lacrosse, but Jane is even better. Shane is the best at it, though.
Not every adjective can be compared. Some describe an either-or quality: a table is either wooden or it is not, and it cannot be more wooden than another one.
Agreement
In English, an adjective never changes to agree with the word it modifies. The same form works for every noun: the white rabbit, the white rabbits, the white bedroom.
In languages like French, the adjective agrees with the noun in gender and number:
| French | English | Why |
|---|---|---|
| le lapin blanc | the white rabbit | lapin is masculine, so the adjective is blanc; le lapin blanche is wrong |
| la chambre blanche | the white bedroom | chambre is feminine, so the adjective is blanche; la chambre blanc is wrong |
That is one thing English makes easy: learn an adjective once, and you can use it with any noun.