Adjectives

An adjective is a word which tells us more about a noun and is used when we describe people, things, events, etc. We use adjectives before nouns and after some verbs.

1. Kinds of adjectives

a) Demonstrative: this, that, these, those

b) Distributive: each, every, either, neither

c) Quantitative: some, any, no; little, few; many, much; one, twenty

d) Interrogative: which, what, whose

e) Possessive: my, your, his, her, its, our, their

f) Of quality: clever, dry, fat, golden, good, heavy, square

2. Participles used as adjectives

Both present participles (ing) and past participles (ed) can be used as adjectives. But be careful not to confuse them. Present participle adjectives, tiring, boring, interesting, are active and mean ‘having this effect’. Past participle adjectives, tired, bored, interested, are passive and mean ‘affected in this way’. In other words, someone is -ed if something (or someone) is -ing. Or, if something is -ing, it makes you -ed.

Jane is bored because her job is boring.

Jane’s job is boring so Jane is bored.

Other pairs of participle adjectives are:

amusing amused exhausting exhausted

amazing amazed frightening frightened

annoying annoyed horrifying horrified

confusing confused shocking shocked

depressing depressed terrifying terrified

exciting excited worrying worried

3. Position of adjectives: attributive and predicative use

A. Adjectives in 1a-e come before their nouns: this book, each person, which pen, my house and called attributive adjectives.

B. Adjectives of quality, however, can be used either before their nouns, i.e. attributively: a happy man a clever boy a nice day

or after certain verbs, i.e. predicatively. These verbs are called link verbs.

They are:

a) be, become, seem

b) appear, feel, get/grow (=become), keep look (=appear), make, smell, sound, taste, turn.

But a problem with verbs in group b) is that when they are not used as link verbs they can be modified by adverbs in the usual way.

Compare: She turned pale(adjective). (=She became pale)

She turned angrily (adverb).

The soup tasted strange. (adjective)

He tasted that dish suspiciously. (adverb)

C. Some adjectives can be used only attributively or only predicatively, and some can move from one position to the other, very often with the change of meaning. Compare how the meaning of early and late depend on their position: an early/late train means a train scheduled to run early or late in the day. The train is early/late means that it is before/after its proper time.

D. Adjectives: word order

Sometimes we use several adjectives together.

My aunt lives in a lovely small cottage.

In the garden there was a beautiful large square wooden table.

Adjectives like small/large/square/wooden are fact adjectives. They give us objective information about something (age, size, colour etc.). Adjectives like lovely/beautiful are opinion adjectives. They tell us what someone thinks of something. Opinion adjectives usually go before fact adjectives:

opinion fact

a nice sunny day

a beautiful large square wooden table

Sometimes there are two or more fact adjectives. Usually (but not always) we put fact adjectives in this order:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

size age shape colour origin material purpose NOUN

a tall young man

big blue eyes

a small black plastic bag

a long brown wooden walking stick

an old French clock

Adjectives of size and length (big/small/tall/short/long etc.) usually go be fore adjectives of shape and width (round/fat/thin/slim/wide etc.):

a large round table a tall thin girl a long narrow street