adjective phrase

A word group with an adjective as its head. This adjective may be accompanied by modifiers, determiners, and/or qualifiers.

Adjective phrases modify nouns. They may be attributive (appearing before the noun) or predicative (appearing after a linking verb), but not all adjectives can be used in both positions.

See also:

• Adding Adjectives and Adverbs to the Basic Sentence Unit
• Adjective Clause
• Degree Modifier
• Phrase
• Prepositional Phrase
• Sentence Building With Adjectives and Adverbs

Examples and Observations:

• Merdine opened a sweet young coconut.



• "Humans can be fairly ridiculous animals."
  (Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, 2007)



• Buddy thinks the shampoo tastes awfully funny.



• Tony lost his dark brown briefcase.



• After Don's accident, his behavior grew stranger and stranger.



• "An adjective phrase consists of an adjective which may be preceded and/or followed by other words. The premodifier is always an adverb phrase, but the post-modifiers can be an adverb phrase, a prepositional phrase, or even a clause. It is also possible to have a modifier that is partly in front and partly behind the head, called a discontinuous modifier, abbreviated as disc-mod."
  (Marjolijn Verspoor and Kim Sauter, English Sentence Analysis: An Introductory Course. John Benjamins, 2000)



• "Marge, you're as pretty as Princess Leia and as smart as Yoda."
  (Homer Simpson)



• "There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary."
  (Brendan Behan)



• "There may be very little difference between a noun phrase and an adjective phrase in structures where the adjectives occur before the word it qualifies. Most noun phrases consist of a head noun plus one or more adjectives, or indeed an adjective phrase itself. Consider the examples in a, below.

  a. [ADJECTIVE PHRASES]
  'It was cold, bleak, biting weather.'
  
  'He's an extraordinary looking man, and yet I can really name nothing out of the way.'
  
  'In Beijing these days, one of the fastest-growing fortunes the world has ever seen is managed by fewer than two-dozen traders.'
  
  'This was a hearty, healthy, dapper, red-faced gentleman, with a shock of hair prematurely white, and a boisterous and decided manner.'

  In each of these examples, if we include the italicized head nouns, we have noun phrases with embedded adjective phrases; without the head nouns, we have adjective phrases. The focus is always on the head word (HW)."
  (Bernard O'Dwyer, Modern English Structures: Form, Function, and Position. Broadview, 2006)