Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Kenneth Beare. Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. Other Adjectival Considerations Review the section on Compound Nouns and Modifiers for the formation of modifiers created when words are connected: a four-year-old child, a nineteenth-century novel, an empty-headed fool.
Review the section on Possessives for a distinction between possessive forms and "adjectival labels. Adjectives that are really Participles , verb forms with -ing and -ed endings, can be troublesome for some students. It is one thing to be a frightened child; it is an altogether different matter to be a frightening child. Do you want to go up to your professor after class and say that you are confused or that you are confusing?
The -ed ending modifiers are often accompanied by prepositions these are not the only choices :. A- Adjectives The most common of the so-called a- adjectives are ablaze, afloat, afraid, aghast, alert, alike, alive, alone, aloof, ashamed, asleep, averse, awake, aware. These adjectives will primarily show up as predicate adjectives i. Occasionally, however, you will find a- adjectives before the word they modify: the alert patient, the aloof physician.
Most of them, when found before the word they modify, are themselves modified: the nearly awake student, the terribly alone scholar. And a- adjectives are sometimes modified by "very much": very much afraid, very much alone, very much ashamed, etc. Definition Adjectives are words that describe or modify another person or thing in the sentence. He remembered yet the East India Tea House at the Fair, the sandalwood, the turbans, and the robes, the cool interior and the smell of India tea; and he had felt now the nostalgic thrill of dew-wet mornings in Spring, the cherry scent, the cool clarion earth, the wet loaminess of the garden, the pungent breakfast smells and the floating snow of blossoms.
He knew the inchoate sharp excitement of hot dandelions in young earth; in July, of watermelons bedded in sweet hay, inside a farmer's covered wagon; of cantaloupe and crated peaches; and the scent of orange rind, bitter-sweet , before a fire of coals. He knew the good male smell of his father's sitting-room; of the smooth worn leather sofa, with the gaping horse-hair rent; of the blistered varnished wood upon the hearth; of the heated calf-skin bindings; of the flat moist plug of apple tobacco, stuck with a red flag; of wood-smoke and burnt leaves in October; of the brown tired autumn earth; of honey-suckle at night; of warm nasturtiums, of a clean ruddy farmer who comes weekly with printed butter, eggs, and milk; of fat limp underdone bacon and of coffee; of a bakery-oven in the wind; of large deep-hued stringbeans smoking-hot and seasoned well with salt and butter; of a room of old pine boards in which books and carpets have been stored, long closed ; of Concord grapes in their long white baskets.
Position of Adjectives Unlike Adverbs , which often seem capable of popping up almost anywhere in a sentence, adjectives nearly always appear immediately before the noun or noun phrase that they modify.
Something wicked this way comes. And there are certain adjectives that, in combination with certain words, are always "postpositive" coming after the thing they modify : The president elect , heir apparent to the Glitzy fortune, lives in New York proper. Grammar's Response According to Bryan Garner, "complete" is one of those adjectives that does not admit of comparative degrees. Other adjectives that Garner would include in this list are as follows: absolute impossible principal adequate inevitable stationary chief irrevocable sufficient complete main unanimous devoid manifest unavoidable entire minor unbroken fatal paramount unique final perpetual universal ideal preferable whole From The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style by Bryan Garner.
She is as bright as her mother. Premodifiers with Degrees of Adjectives Both adverbs and adjectives in their comparative and superlative forms can be accompanied by premodifiers, single words and phrases, that intensify the degree.
We were a lot more careful this time. He works a lot less carefully than the other jeweler in town. We like his work so much better. You'll get your watch back all the faster. The same process can be used to downplay the degree: The weather this week has been somewhat better. He approaches his schoolwork a little less industriously than his brother does.
And sometimes a set phrase, usually an informal noun phrase, is used for this purpose: He arrived a whole lot sooner than we expected. That's a heck of a lot better. If the intensifier very accompanies the superlative, a determiner is also required: She is wearing her very finest outfit for the interview.
They're doing the very best they can. Occasionally, the comparative or superlative form appears with a determiner and the thing being modified is understood: Of all the wines produced in Connecticut, I like this one the most. The quicker you finish this project, the better. Of the two brothers, he is by far the faster. Less versus Fewer When making a comparison between quantities we often have to make a choice between the words fewer and less.
Generally, when we're talking about countable things, we use the word fewer ; when we're talking about measurable quantities that we cannot count, we use the word less.
If you click HERE , you will get a one-page duplicate of this chart, which you can print out on a regular piece of paper. When you have three coordinated adjectives, separate them all with commas, but don't insert a comma between the last adjective and the noun in spite of the temptation to do so because you often pause there : a popular, respected, and good looking student See the section on Commas for additional help in punctuating coordinated adjectives.
Capitalizing Proper Adjectives When an adjective owes its origins to a proper noun, it should probably be capitalized. Directional and seasonal adjectives are not capitalized unless they're part of a title: We took the northwest route during the spring thaw. We stayed there until the town's annual Fall Festival of Small Appliances. The difference between a Collective Noun which is usually regarded as singular but which can be plural in certain contexts and a collective adjective is that the latter is always plural and requires a plural verb: The rural poor have been ignored by the media.
The rich of Connecticut are responsible. The elderly are beginning to demand their rights. The young at heart are always a joy to be around. Adjectival Opposites The opposite or the negative aspect of an adjective can be formed in a number of ways. My mother is less patient than my father. Of all the new sitcoms, this is my least favorite show. The -ed ending modifiers are often accompanied by prepositions these are not the only choices : We were amazed at all the circus animals.
We were amused by the clowns. We were annoyed by the elephants. We were bored by the ringmaster. We were confused by the noise. We were disappointed by the motorcycle daredevils. We were disappointed in their performance.
Adjectives are said to be coordinate if they modify the same noun in a sentence. This is going to be a long, cold winter. Sometimes, an adjective and a noun form a single semantic unit, which is then modified by another adjective.
In this case, the adjectives are not coordinate and should not be separated by a comma. My cat, Goober, loves sleeping on this tattered woolen sweater. No one could open the old silver locket. But there are a couple of ways you can test them. Try inserting the word and between the adjectives to see if the phrase still seems natural. Woolen sweater forms a unit of meaning that is modified by tattered.
Another way to test for coordinate adjectives is to try switching the order of the adjectives and seeing if the phrase still works. As mentioned above, many of us learned in school that adjectives modify nouns and that adverbs modify verbs. This leads to a common type of error: incorrectly substituting an adverb in place of a predicate adjective. An adverb would describe how you perform the action of feeling—an adjective describes what you feel.
Consider the difference between these two sentences: Goober smells badly. Goober smells bad. One more thing you should know about adjectives is that, sometimes, a word that is normally used as a noun can function as an adjective, depending on its placement. Guide is a noun. But in this sentence, it modifies dog. It works the other way, too.
Some words that are normally adjectives can function as nouns: Candice is working on a fundraiser to help the homeless. In the context of this sentence, homeless is functioning as a noun. It can be hard to wrap your head around this if you think of adjectives and nouns only as particular classes of words.
Good writing is precise and concise. Sometimes, you need an adjective to convey exactly what you mean. Is it a big house, or is it a mansion?
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