Adjectives

What is an Adjective?

An adjective is a word that serves to modify a noun or pronoun by describing, identifying, or quantifying its specific characteristics. Essentially, the purpose of an adjective is to answer the following questions:

• How many are there?
• What kind is it?
• Which one is it?

Adjectives are often confused with adverbs by those who are learning about English grammar for the first time. However, it’s easy to correctly identify an adverb if you remember that many of them are formed by adding -ly to an adjective. While happy is an adjective, happily is an adverb. In addition, an adjective always follows a form of the verb to be when it modifies the noun before the verb.

To learn more about the correct use of adjectives in the English language, yourDictionary recommends the following helpful resources:

• What is an Adjective? outlines the role of adjectives while discussing how to identify possessive, demonstrative, interrogative, and indefinite adjectives.
• The Internet Grammar of English describes the characteristics you can use to determine whether or not a particular word is an adjective.
• Adjectives with Countable and Uncountable Nouns explains the rules for using adjectives with nouns that can be expressed in a plural form.

Examples of Adjectives

When discussing adjectives many teachers have their students brainstorm a list of the adjectives they encounter on a regular basis. This list may include:

• Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, black, and white are adjectives because they describe the color of something.
• Tall, short, fat, thin, pretty, and ugly are adjectives that can be used to describe the physical characteristic of a person.
• Zany, quirky, vivacious, exuberant, determined, diligent, and adaptable are adjectives because they outline personality traits.