Adjectives

What is an adjective?

Adjectives are words that modify or describe nouns or pronouns. Adjectives make your writing and speaking more specific. Words like blue, beautiful, great, ten, this, etc, are adjectives.

Types of Adjectives

These are the most common types of adjectives:

Demonstrative adjectives
Distributive adjectives
Interrogative adjectives
Possessive adjectives
Qualitative adjectives
Quantitative adjectives

Demonstrative adjectives

Demonstrative adjectives are used to indicate specific persons, animals, or objects. They are, this, that, these and those.

Examples

This city is wonderful

Those books are amusing.

This wallet looks beautiful?

Demonstrative adjectives

	Near	Far
Singular	This	That
Plural	These	Those

Singular demonstrative adjectives

Singular demonstrative adjectives refer to persons or objects . They are: this and that.

Examples

This cat is so nice!

This bottle is empty.

That film remains the best.

That man is 90 years old.

Plural demonstrative adjectives refer to persons or objects.They are: these and those.

Examples

These men are smart.

These dogs are noisy!

Those birds fly spectacularly!

Distributive adjectives

Distributive adjectives are “each”, “every”, “everyone”, “everybody”, “everything”.  They are used with singular nouns to refer to members of a group as individuals.

Examples

We go to the cinema every week.

Every product has a reference.

Each of you is smart.

Each time you speak, you improve your English.

Did anyone visit Rome?

Is everything right here?

Interrogative adjectives

Interrogative adjectives are the three wh-words which used to modify nouns and ask questions.

They are: what, which, and whose.

What (used for things)

Examples

What film do you like best?

What book have you last read?

What time do you wake up daily?

Which (used for persons or things)

Examples

Which country did she visit?

Which car will he buy?

Which journalist do you follow best?

Whose (used for possession)

Examples

Whose idea was that?

Whose glasses are these?

Whose boy is this?

Possessive adjectives

Possessive adjectives modify the nouns following them. They are used to indicate possession.

They are: My, your (singular), his, her, its, our, your (plural) and their.

	Possessive adjective	Examples
Singular	My Your His Her Its	He is my best friend Your job looks amusing I like his style Her car is pink The cat is playing with its tail
Plural	Our Your Their	Our friends are helpful. Your dog is noisy! Their words are motivating

Quantitative adjectives 

Quantitative adjectives are words used to talk about measurement. They answer the questions, how much and how many? They are any, much, some, few, many, etc.

Examples

Ali drinks half of my orange drink.

He has many coins in his pocket.

This boss has no sense of respect.

You have much time to act.

I haven’t received any response, yet.

None of you will fail the exam.

Qualitative adjectives

Qualitative adjectives are used to describe quality of people, animals or things. In other words, they are all the adjectives that describe our opinions, taste, smell, sounds and touch. 

Qualitative adjectives answer the question, what kind?

Some examples of Qualitative adjectives

Interesting, boring, scary, great, funny, green, dark, fair, silky, long, black, purple, red, tough, furry, clean, dirty, sweet, fat, tall, short, thin, fat, round, glassy, sad, amazing, friendly, etc.

Examples

My friend, John, is caring.

There exist colorful butterflies in the garden.

The cake is very sweet.

His success story sounds very inspiring.

She has bought a beautiful car.

Placement of adjectives

Adjectives usually go before the nouns they modify or after linking verbs verbs like verbs be, look, seem, etc.

Before nouns

Examples

She has a long hair.

I bought some delicious chocolate.

There is a small mouse in the kitchen.

After verbs

Examples

He is smart.

The pizza smells perfect.

I feel good today.

Comparison

In addition to modifying or describing words, adjectives are also used to make comparison.

Levels of comparison: There exist three levels of comparison:

Level of adjective	Examples
Positive	This idea is great
Comparative	This idea is greater than his.
Superlative	This idea is the greatest.

Consider this paragraph, describing Sara.

Sara is a student. Her hair is longer than her sister’s. She is more intelligent than her sister. She is the most beautiful girl in the class! And she is the most hard-working girl, too.