Adjective

adjective (noun): a part-of-speech that modifies or describes a noun or a pronoun

An adjective is one of the eight parts of speech.

An adjective is a word that tells us more about a noun. It "describes" or "modifies" a noun (The big dog was hungry). In these examples, the adjective is in bold and the noun that it modifies is in italics.

An adjective often comes BEFORE a noun:

• a green car
• a dark sky
• an interesting story

And sometimes an adjective comes AFTER a verb:

• My car is green.
• The sky became dark.
• His story seemed interesting.

But adjectives can also modify pronouns (She is beautiful). Look at these examples:

• They were empty.
• I thought it seemed strange.
• Those are not expensive.

Note that we can often use two or more adjectives together (a beautiful young French lady / it is black and white).

Adjective Form

Some adjectives have particular endings, for example:

• -able/-ible: washable, credible
• -ish/-like: childish, childlike
• -ful/-less: careful, careless
• -ous: dangerous, harmonious
• -y: dirty, pretty

However, many adjectives have no obvious form.

Comparative, Superlative

Most adjectives can be comparative or superlative, for example:

• big, bigger, biggest
• good, better, best
• beautiful, more beautiful, most beautiful