Adjectives describing what kind

The straight, narrow shape of the house was very different from the other houses on the block. Did you know that all colors like red, blue, orange and green also modify nouns? Click here to learn more about describing words and how they modify sentences. Adjective use comes with a few rules. Generally, they appear immediately before nouns and pronouns, but there are always exceptions. Our plain, old-fashioned garden yielded juicy, bright red tomatoes. The apple, green and cool, tasted delicious on that hot afternoon.

They can even come immediately after possessive words like my, your, his, her, its, ours and theirs. My silver-tongued friend is always getting other people to pay for his lunch. Before you go, why not save time on your next academic assignment? We understand that parts of speech and grammar can be tricky. Learn more about what a preposition , conjunction , and determiner are. Certain features require a modern browser to function. The sequel was even more incredible than the first movie.

Superlative adjectives Superlative adjectives are used to compare more than two people or things by indicating which one is the most supreme or extreme. Superlative adjective examples Adrian is the fastest member of our team. Out of all of my books, this one is the oldest. We are trying to figure out the least confusing way to explain the lesson to the new students.

Predicate adjectives Predicate adjectives are adjectives that appear in the predicate of a sentence as a subject complement rather than directly next to the nouns or pronouns that they modify. Predicate adjective examples Andrea is tall. Freddy became angry.

The steak looks delicious. Compound adjectives Compound adjectives are adjectives that are formed from multiple words, which are usually connected by hyphens. Compound adjective examples She had enough of the double-dealing salesman. My happy-go-lucky daughter loved our trip to Disneyland. The better-off members of the city live by the river. Possessive adjectives Possessive adjectives are often used to express possession or ownership. Possessive adjective examples My favorite food is pizza.

Sydney spent the day with her parents. Demonstrative adjectives Demonstrative adjectives are used to express relative positions in space and time. Demonstrative adjective examples This watch is cheaper than that one. This weekend is going to be really fun. Watch out for those prickly rose bushes next to you. Proper adjectives Proper adjectives are adjectives formed from proper nouns. Proper adjective examples He was reading a Russian newspaper. I think Haitian food is tasty. We studied the history of Victorian England in school today.

Participial adjectives Participial adjectives are adjectives that are based on participles , which are words that usually end in -ed or -ing and derive from verbs. Participial adjective examples Travis was late for his swimming lessons. Please hand me my reading glasses. The silly clown cheered up the bored children. Limiting adjectives Limiting adjectives are adjectives that restrict a noun or pronoun rather than describe any of its characteristics or qualities.

Limiting adjective examples I bought some eggs at the store. Adjectives are used within sentences to modify nouns. So they might tell you what something looks like "beautiful hat" or the number of something "ten flowers. Additionally, adjectives are found with the noun they are modifying. To understand how an adjective is used within a sentence, check out a few example sentences with adjectives. Additionally, you can use adjectives to complement a linking verb called a predicate adjective.

So the adjective might provide more about how something is feeling. Now that we've seen a nice sampling of adjectives, there's one thing left to note. It's best to use discretion with adjectives. You never want to overdo it. Generally, nouns and verbs should do most of the descriptive work in your writing. Don't simply tell your reader something is beautiful, exciting or interesting. Use your words to set a detailed scene and consider using a sprinkling of adjectives rather than a heavy dousing.

As you seek to strike that balance, expand your adjectival toolbox a little further with this list of positive adjectives. Having a wide variety of options at your disposal will allow you to choose the right adjective at the right time. All rights reserved. Popular Adjectives Examples Adjectives describe, identify or further define nouns and pronouns. Adjectives To Describe Taste Did you have a bland bagel? Adjectives To Describe Touch When it comes to touching something, you can use all kinds of adjectives to describe it.

Adjectives To Describe Sound Sounds have different volumes. Adjectives To Describe Color The world is full of a rainbow of color. Coordinate adjectives should be separated by a comma or the word and.

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.