adjective

Definition:

The part of speech (or word class) that modifies a noun or a pronoun. Adjective: adjectival.

In addition to their basic (or positive) forms, most descriptive adjectives have two other forms: comparative and superlative.

See also:

• Absolute Adjective
• Adjective Phrase
• Attributive Adjective
• Attributive Noun
• Compound Adjective
• Degree
• Demonstrative Adjective
• Epithet
• Intensifier
• Gradability
• Modifier
• Predicative Adjective

Exercises:

• Exercise in Identifying Adjectives
• Adding Adjectives and Adverbs to the Basic Sentence Unit
• Practice in Turning Adjectives Into Adverbs
• Sentence Building with Adjectives and Adverbs
• Sentence Combining With Adjectives and Adverbs

Etymology:

From the Latin, "to add" and "to throw"

Examples:

• "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."
  (Benjamin Franklin)



• "Good men are gruff and grumpy, cranky, crabbed, and cross. I am also acerbic, waspish, sour, belligerent, and very occasionally shrewish."
  (Clement Freud)



• "These children—unoffending, innocent, and beautiful—were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity."
  (Martin Luther King, Jr., eulogy for the young victims of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, Sep. 18, 1963)



• "He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise."
  (Voltaire)



• "All things bright and beautiful,
  All creatures great and small.
  (Cecil Frances Alexander)



• "He was a tall man with an astonishing and somehow elegant curvature of the spine, formed by an enlarged lower abdomen, which he carried in a stately and contented way, as if it contained money and securities."
  (John Cheever, The Wapshot Scandal, 1964)



• "At last I knelt on the island's winterkilled grass, lost, dumbstruck, staring at the frog in the creek just four feet away. He was a very small frog with wide, dull eyes."
  (Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 1974)



• "Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable."
  (Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 1886)

Observations:

• "Most common adjectives form pairs which contrast in terms of meaning: good - bad, wide - narrow, useful - useless, and so on. Many adjectives are derived from from other words (especially nouns), and are easy to recognize by their suffixes. Some of the most common adjective suffixes are: -al (as in equal), -ous (as in famous), -ic (as in basic), -y (as in sleepy), -ful (as in beautiful and -less (as in hopeless)."
  (Geoffrey Leech, A Glossary of English Grammar. Edinburgh Univ. Press, 2006)



• "When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them--then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart."
  (Mark Twain)



• "In his 2002 memorial eulogy to former cabinet minister Barbara Castle, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw recalled her remark, "Bugger the adjectives. It's the nouns and verbs people want."
  (Ned Halley, Dictionary of Modern English Grammar. Wordsworth, 2005)

Pronunciation: ADD-jek-tiv