Adjective can be defined as “Adjective is a word naming an attribute of a noun or pronoun, such as sweet, red, or technical.”
Explanation
Adjectives are words which modify, identify or quantify nouns or pronouns. It is a parts of speech and provides more information about noun or pronoun in order to make a clear view of noun or pronoun in the reader’s mind and create feeling about what writer has written.
Adjective words are describing words such as black, handsome, fair, beautiful, bold, pretty, fierce, many, few, majestic, small, tall, blue, much, more, green, cute, red, smart, etc. Adjective words cannot stand on their own however used to describe nouns or pronouns or modify them. It provides specialty to the noun or pronoun. Number of rules govern the use of various types of adjectives in the sentence. It is very necessary to understand all the rules to be able to use adjectives to get advantage.
For example:
Adjectives are of different types based upon its effect on the noun or pronoun. Various types of adjective are described below with proper definition and examples.
1) Adjective of Quality or Descriptive Adjective
Adjective of quality is also known as descriptive adjective as it describes the nature and attribute of nouns or pronouns. They give quite better idea to understand the characteristics of noun or pronoun by answering the question. Descriptive adjectives are like honest, kind, large, bulky, thin, fat, beautiful, smart, ugly, etc.
For Example:
Adjective of quantity shows the approximate amount of a noun or pronoun however do not provide exact numbers. It tells the amount of noun or pronoun in relative or whole terms. Such as; few, little, enough, all, many, half, no, great, etc.
For Example:
3) Adjective of Number or Numeral Adjective
Adjective of number is also known as numeral adjective. It indicates the number of nouns and their place in the sentence. Numeral adjective is categorized into three different sections which are described below:
Definite Numeral Adjective
Definite numeral adjectives are those adjectives which clearly show the exact number of nouns or its order.
For example:
One, two, three, four, twenty, thirty three, etc are known as cardinals.
First, second, third, fourth, seventh, tenth, etc are known as ordinals.
Indefinite Numeral Adjective
Indefinite numeral adjectives are those adjectives which do not show the exact numerical amount of noun however give general idea of that amount.
For example:
Many, some, any, few, all, several, etc.
Distributive Numeral Adjective
Distributive numeral adjectives are those adjectives which followed by a singular noun and a singular verb. However, sometimes there is use of a plural noun and a singular verb by using each of, either of, every one of, and neither of.
For example:
Either, each, neither, every, another, other, etc.
Demonstrative adjectives are those adjectives which indicate a particular noun or pronoun uses adjectives like this, these, that, and those.
For example:
Interrogative adjectives are those adjectives which are used to ask questions and accompany nouns. It is placed before noun in the sentence. Interrogative adjectives are like where, which, what, and whose.
For example:
Coordinate adjectives are those adjectives which appear in the sequence in order to modify the same noun. Such type of adjectives are separated by the use of commas or and (always comes before final adjective). They can be rearranged in a series.
For example:
dull, nice, rainy day, dark and stormy night
Non-coordinate adjectives are those adjectives which do not make any sense after inserting commas or and in between. Non-coordinate adjectives do not use commas or and to get separated and cannot be rearranged in a series.
For example:
Possessive adjectives are those adjectives which we use to point out the noun belongs to someone. Possessive adjectives are like My, our, your, her, his, their, and its.
For example:
Learning all the rules of ordering adjectives make us able to order adjectives in a meaningful sequence. Learning rules of ordering adjectives are very important in order to use number of different adjectives while making sentence. It makes us able to understand which adjective should be placed first in the sentence and which one last.
Generally, we can make sentence by putting only one adjective into the sentence however in order to know further details about the noun and pronoun, we can place more than one adjectives into the sentence in proper order by using rules of ordering adjectives. Here are the rules of ordering the adjectives:
Determiners
We should first place the adjectives like article, possessive, demonstrative, numerical, quantifier, or distributive adjectives into the sentence. An example is given below using a numerical adjective first:
If we rewrite the above example by putting the quality adjective first to the quantity adjective, the we see that:
Quantity, Number, and Opinion
The use of numerical adjective should follow after and not before while using adjectives like article, possessive, demonstrative, quantifier, or distributive adjectives in the sentence. However, in case, if we put numerical adjective as first adjective, we can follow it with opinion or quality adjective.
For example:
Size
All the above sequential adjectives like numerical, article, quality or opinion adjectives are followed by another adjective describing the size of noun.
For example:
Age
All the above adjectives are followed by the adjective describing age of the noun. In the above example, we can see that the word “little” provides some information about kid’s age however, not very clear. So, it needs a separate sentence to describe the age of noun.
For example:
Or,
Or,
We can show the age of noun in the sentence in many ways such as, by changing the noun (like toddlers or school-age) in order to reflect age or showing the age in separate sentence. However, only changing the noun does not make clear sense of age and creates confusion to the reader. So, it is good to add second sentence to identify the age of noun.
Shape
In order to describe the shape of the noun, we can use variety of object shapes such as circle, square, triangle, rectangle, etc. If your noun is a person, you would describe their appearance. For this example, let’s change the example so we can actually use a shape:
For example:
Color
We can add color adjective to the sentence after shape adjective.
For example:
Such as:
Origin
In order to describe the origin of the item, we need to locate the place where the item is purchased or manufactured by the use of adjectives.
For example:
Material
In order to provide detail of the item, we need to describe about the material of the item it is made of such as rubber, wood, plastic, etc. Whereas, we need to describe behavior if we talk about a person.
For example:
Grammatical Modifier
Sometimes, nouns or other forms of speech are used to modify nouns by using special kind of adjectives called as grammatical modifiers. Grammatical modifiers are added in last to a sentence.
For example:
Degrees of adjectives or levels of adjectives or degrees of comparison are of three types namely, positive, comparative, and superlative. All the degrees of adjectives are described below with proper examples.
Positive Degree
Positive degree of adjectives are used when we talk about the single person, place, or thing.
For example:
Comparative Degree
Comparative degree of adjectives are used when we compare two persons, places, or things. We can add “er” to the simple word to transform it to the comparative form or we can use the word “more” or “than” after the adjective.
For example:
In order to transform the word ending with letter ‘y’, we need to replace ‘y’ with ‘i’ and then add “er” such as:
Superlative Degree
Superlative degree of adjectives are used when we compare more than two things. The word “the” is added before the adjective. A common word is transformed to its superlative form by adding a suffix “est” or the word “most.”
For example:
In order to transform the word ending with letter ‘y’, we need to replace ‘y’ with ‘i’ and then add “est” such as: