Adjectives: the essentials

adjectives

Adjectives are one of the main classes of words in any language. How they work and how they are used, however, vary.

Definition

An adjective is usually defined something like

a word grammatically attached to a noun to modify or describe it

Easy question:
Spot the adjectives in these examples:

The tall trees bent in the fierce winds.
He finally came along half an hour late for the first meeting.
The green-jacketed, first-form students looked nervous.
The audience was fascinated by the short lecture.
The policeman involved in the nasty incident was quite upset.
The small, green sports car was thoroughly washed and polished till it shone as bright as a new pin.

Click here when you have answers.

The adjectives are highlighted in black in the following:

The tall trees bent in the fierce winds.
He finally came along half an hour late for the first meeting.
The green-jacketed, first-form students looked nervous.
The audience was fascinated by the short lecture.
The policeman involved in the nasty incident was quite upset.
The small, green sports car was thoroughly washed and polished till it shone as bright as a new pin.

Some are easier to identify than others, aren't they? Here are some comments:

Adjectives in English usually come before the noun they modify. We can see this with tall trees, fierce winds, first meeting, green-jacketed, first-form students, short lecture, nasty incident, small, green sports car and new pin.
This use of adjectives is called attributive.
Some adjectives are only used attributively. Examples are entire, outright, pure. We can have, e.g.:
    He ate the entire packet
    It was the pure truth
and
    That was an outright lie
but we can't say:
    *The packet was entire
    *The truth was pure
or
    *The lie was outright
In sentences 3., 4. and 5., however, we have the alternative adjective position: looked nervous, was fascinated, was quite upset.
Here the adjectives follow the noun they modify and are connected to it either by the verb be or by another verb which works in the same way. These are called, incidentally, copular verbs and one of their functions is to connect a noun with its adjective. Other copular verbs include seem, appear, get, smell, taste, become. There's a guide to copular verbs on this site, linked below in the list of related guides.
This use of adjectives is called predicative.
Some adjectives can only be used predicatively. Examples are asleep, awake, alive, alert etc. They start with a-. We can't say
*The asleep dog
and we need to say
The dog is / was / seems asleep
for example.

There are two oddballs in the examples:

the policeman involved
A few adjectives in English can (and sometimes must) follow the noun and they include involved, concerned, proper, elect and some others. They need not concern us here.
shone as bright as a new pin
The adjective bright is actually acting as an adverb modifying the verb shone. It tells us how the car shone, not what the car was like. That's an unusual use of an adjective which will also not concern us here. Many people would prefer brightly here but the use of an adjective form as an adverb is actually quite common informally.

Did you identify any of the following as adjectives: finally, quite, thoroughly, washed, polished, bright?

If you did:

Words which modifies a verb as in finally came and thoroughly washed (i.e., which tell us how something was done) are adverbs, not adjectives.
The other issue is that we can't tell an adjective just by looking at its form. We need to know what it is doing in the sentence. The words washed and polished are certainly used as adjectives as in, e.g., the newly washed carpet or the polished glassware, but in this case they are simply verbs (past participle forms, in fact).

Tests for adjectives

There are two simple tests for adjectives:

We can make comparatives either by adding -er or -est or by putting more / most before them
We can modify them with the adverb very

Try these tests with the adjectives we have encountered so far. What do you notice?
Click here when you have done that.

We can have: taller, fiercer, more nervous, more fascinated, shorter, nastier, more upset, smaller, greener and newer.
However, we can't have *firster, *more green-jacketed, *more first-form, *more sports.
The reason is twofold:
1. Some adjectives simply cannot be made more or less: you are either first or you aren't, something is either impossible or it isn't. Such adjectives are called ungradable.
2. The second reason is that some adjectives tell us what class of thing we are dealing with. For example, French cheese tells us what sort of cheese we are talking about, sports car tells us what sort of car it is. These are called classifiers and cannot be modified this way. An adjective which is not a classifier is called an epithet.
We can also have very tall, very fierce, very nervous, very upset, very new and so on. There's some argument whether we can have very first in this sense, because very means truly here, or very fascinated because fascinated is usually considered too strong a word to be modified by very. Compare it with very amazing, very dreadful, very astounding etc. These adjectives, sometimes called extreme, are not usually gradable with very (we prefer adverbs such as completely, totally, extremely etc. to modify them). See the guide to gradability, linked in the list at the end, for more.
We can't have *very green-jacketed, *very first-form etc. because these are ungradable adjectives or classifiers. A car can't be *a very sports car.

There are a number of other tests for adjectives. For more, see the more advanced guide to this area, linked below.

Comparing adjectives

Adjectives can be made comparative or superlative.
Comparative structures are, for example:
    Mary is taller than John
    Mary is more intelligent than me
Superlative structures single out one as the highest form of the adjective, e.g.:
    She is the fittest person for the job
    That is the most ridiculous idea of them all
The rules for how we make the forms apply to both.

English has two ways to compare adjectives:

We can add -er or -est to the end of the adjective (dropping an 'e' or changing 'y' to 'i' where we need to). This is called inflexion.
We can add more or most before the adjective. This is called a periphrastic form.

Try modifying the adjectives here and work out what the rules are. Click on the table when you have the answer. The following focuses on the comparative form but the superlatives follow the same rules.

comparison 1

There are some irregular ones (as in most languages) including, e.g., far-further/farther, good-better-best, bad-worse-worst etc. and there's a bit more to it than that but this is the simplest explanation.
There is a more complete (and more technical) guide to comparison in the in-service section, linked below.

Ordering adjectives

Many books for students delight in giving complex and elaborate rules for why we say, for example:

small, brown house
not
brown, small house
tall citrus trees
not
citrus tall trees
rude English tourists
not
English rude tourists
ugly, fat, porcelain, Chinese vases
not
porcelain, Chinese, fat, ugly vases

But actually the general rule is quite simple. Any ideas? Click when you have some.

Classifiers like, English, Chinese and citrus go closest to the noun. Some classifiers are inseparable from the noun, e.g., schoolboys. They form a compound.
Adjectives which are ungradable (i.e., cannot be more or less so) come next. The example here is porcelain. Something is either porcelain or it isn't. Often these relate to the material something is made of.
Adjectives which are gradable but not very arguable come next. The examples here are fat and tall.
Adjectives which are a matter of opinion come furthest from the noun. The example here is ugly (and probably, rude)).

The simple way to present this is on a cline, like this:

ordering adjectives

There is, of course, a test on this.

Related guides
guide to adjectives	for a more advanced and detailed guide to this area
comparison	for a more technical guide to how things are compared in English
gradability	for a guide to a key adjectival characteristic
copular verbs	for a guide to how verbs link the subject to the characteristic, its complement