Adjective

Adjectives

Adjectives are an important part of speech. They usually describe a person or thing. They tell us what somebody or something is like.

What is an Adjective?

adjective (noun): a part-of-speech that modifies or describes a noun or a pronoun

An adjective is one of the eight parts of speech.

An adjective is a word that tells us more about a noun. It "describes" or "modifies" a noun (The big dog was hungry). In these examples, the adjective is in bold and the noun that it modifies is in italics.

An adjective often comes BEFORE a noun:

• a green car
• a dark sky
• an interesting story

And sometimes an adjective comes AFTER a verb:

• My car is green.
• The sky became dark.
• His story seemed interesting.

But adjectives can also modify pronouns (She is beautiful). Look at these examples:

• They were empty.
• I thought it seemed strange.
• Those are not expensive.

Note that we can often use two or more adjectives together (a beautiful young French lady / it is black and white).

The adjective is the enemy of the noun

This is sometimes said because, very often, if we use the precise noun we don't need an adjective. For example, instead of saying "a large, impressive house" (2 adjectives + 1 noun) we could simply say "a mansion" (1 noun).

Adjective Form

Some adjectives have particular endings, for example:

• -able/-ible: washable, credible
• -ish/-like: childish, childlike
• -ful/-less: careful, careless
• -ous: dangerous, harmonious
• -y: dirty, pretty

However, many adjectives have no obvious form.

Comparative, Superlative

Most adjectives can be comparative or superlative, for example:

• big, bigger, biggest
• good, better, best
• beautiful, more beautiful, most beautiful

Adjective Order

There are 2 basic positions for adjectives:

1. Adjective Before Noun
2. Adjective After Verb

		adj. before noun			adj. after verb
1	I have a	big	dog.
2			Snow	is	white.

Adjective Before Noun

We often use more than one adjective before the noun:

• I like big black dogs.
• She was wearing a beautiful long red dress.

What is the correct order for two or more adjectives?

1. First of all, the general order is:

opinion, fact

"Opinion" is what you think about something. "Fact" is what is definitely true about something.

• a lovely new dress (not a new lovely dress)
• a boring French film (not a French boring film)

2. The "normal" order for fact adjectives is

size, shape, age, colour / origin / material / purpose

• a small 18th-century French coffee table
• a rectangular black wooden box

3. Determiners usually come first, even though some grammarians regard them as fact adjectives:

• articles (a, the)
• possessives (my, your...)
• demonstratives (this, that...)
• quantifiers (some, any, few, many...)
• numbers (one, two, three)

Note that when we want to use two colour adjectives, we join them with "and":

• Many newspapers are black and white.
• She was wearing a long, blue and yellow dress.

Here are some examples of adjective order:

	adjectives						head noun
determiner	opinion adjectives	fact adjectives
		other	size, shape, age, colour	origin	material	purpose*
two	ugly		black			guard	dogs
a		well-known		Chinese			artist
a			small, 18th-century	French		coffee	table
your	fabulous		new			sports	car
a	lovely		pink and green	Thai	silk		dress
some			black	Spanish	leather	riding	boots
a			big black and white				dog
this		cheap			plastic	rain	coat
an			old		wooden	fishing	boat
my			new			tennis	racket
a	wonderful		15th-century	Arabic			poem

*often a noun used as an adjective

Not all grammarians agree about the exact order of adjectives, and the detailed rules are complicated. The rules on this page are for the normal, "natural" order of adjectives. These rules are not rigid, and you may sometimes wish to change the order for emphasis. Consider the following conversations:
Conversation 1
A "I want to buy a round table."
B "Do you want a new round table or an old round table?"
Conversation 2
A "I want to buy an old table".
B "Do you want a round old table or a square old table?"

Adjective After Verb

An adjective can come after some verbs, such as: be, become, feel, get, look, seem, smell, sound

Even when an adjective comes after the verb and not before a noun, it always refers to and qualifies the subject of the clause, not the verb.

Look at the examples below: subject verb adjective

• Ram is English.
• Because she had to wait, she became impatient.
• Is it getting dark?
• The examination did not seem difficult.
• Your friend looks nice.
• This towel feels damp.
• That new film doesn't sound very interesting.
• Dinner smells good tonight.
• This milk tastes sour.
• It smells bad.

These verbs are "stative" verbs, which express a state or change of state, not "dynamic" verbs which express an action. Note that some verbs can be stative in one sense (she looks beautiful | it got hot), and dynamic in another (she looked at him | he got the money). The above examples do not include all stative verbs.

Note also that in the above structure (subject verb adjective), the adjective can qualify a pronoun since the subject may be a pronoun.

 

 

Noun as Adjective

As you know, a noun is a person, place or thing, and an adjective is a word that describes a noun:

adjective	noun
clever	teacher
small	office
black	horse

Sometimes we use a noun to describe another noun. In that case, the first noun "acts as" an adjective.

noun as adjective	noun
history	teacher
ticket	office
race	horse

The "noun as adjective" always comes first

If you remember this, it will help you to understand what is being talked about:

• a race horse is a horse that runs in races
• a horse race is a race for horses
• a boat race is a race for boats
• a love story is a story about love
• a war story is a story about war
• a tennis ball is a ball for playing tennis
• tennis shoes are shoes for playing tennis
• a computer exhibition is an exhibition of computers
• a bicycle shop is a shop that sells bicycles

The "noun as adjective" is singular

Just like a real adjective, the "noun as adjective" is invariable. It is usually in the singular form.

Right		Wrong
boat race	boat races	NOT boats race, boats races
toothbrush	toothbrushes	NOT teethbrush, teethbrushes
shoe-lace	shoe-laces	NOT shoes-lace, shoes-laces
cigarette packet	cigarette packets	NOT cigarettes packet, cigarettes packets

In other words, if there is a plural it is on the real noun only.

A few nouns look plural but we usually treat them as singular (for example news, billiards, athletics). When we use these nouns "as adjectives" they are unchanged:

• a news reporter, three news reporters
• one billiards table, four billiards tables
• an athletics trainer, fifty athletics trainers

Exceptions: When we use certain nouns "as adjectives" (clothes, sports, customs, accounts, arms), we use them in the plural form:

• clothes shop, clothes shops
• sports club, sports clubs
• customs duty, customs duties
• accounts department, accounts departments
• arms production

How do we write the "noun as adjective"?

We write the "noun as adjective" and the real noun in several different ways:

• two separate words (car door)
• two hyphenated words (book-case)
• one word (bathroom)

There are no easy rules for this. We even write some combinations in two or all three different ways: (head master, head-master, headmaster)

How do we say the "noun as adjective"?

For pronunciation, we usually stress the first word:

• shoe shop
• boat-race
• bathroom

Can we have more than one "noun as adjective"?

Yes. Just like adjectives, we often use more than one "noun as adjective" together. Look at these examples:

car production costs: we are talking about the costs of producing cars

noun as adjective	noun as adjective	noun
		costs
	production	costs
car	production	costs

England football team coach: we are talking about the coach who trains the team that plays football for England

noun as adjective	noun as adjective	noun as adjective	noun
			coach
		team	coach
	football	team	coach
England	football	team	coach
England	football	team	coaches

Note: in England football team coach can you see a "hidden" "noun as adjective"? Look at the word "football" (foot-ball). These two nouns (foot+ball) have developed into a single noun (football). This is one way that words evolve. Many word combinations that use a "noun as adjective" are regarded as nouns in their own right, with their own dictionary definition. But not all dictionaries agree with each other. For example, some dictionaries list "tennis ball" as a noun and other dictionaries do not.

government road accident research centre: we are talking about a centre that researches into accidents on the road for the government

noun as adjective	noun as adjective	noun as adjective	noun as adjective	noun
				centre
			research	centre
		accident	research	centre
	road	accident	research	centre
government	road	accident	research	centre

Newspapers often use many nouns together in headlines to save space. Look at this example:

BIRD HEALTH RESEARCH CENTRE MURDER MYSTERY

To understand headlines like these, try reading them backwards. The above headline is about a MYSTERY concerning a MURDER in a CENTRE for RESEARCH into the HEALTH of BIRDS.

Note, too, that we can still use a real adjective to qualify a "noun as adjective" structure:

• empty coffee jar
• honest car salesman
• delicious dog food
• rising car production costs
• famous England football team coach