Adjectives
An adjective is a word that defines, qualifies or modifies the meaning of
a noun, or more rarely of a pronoun. It expresses a quality or attribute
of the word it qualifies.
■ Types of Adjective : determining or descriptive
1. Determining adjectives :
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called limiting adjectives, determining adjectives are words that are
generally classed in the family of determiners, and are dealt with
elsewhere: there is a limited number of these words. They are notably
possessive adjectives (such as my, their), numerals and quantifiers (such
as one, two, three, every, many), demonstrative adjectives (such as this
or that), interrogative adjectives (such as which). To learn about the use
of these determining adjectives, please consult the appropriate pages.
2. Descriptive adjectives : qualifying or classifying
When we talk of adjectives, we generally tend to mean "descriptive adjectives". These are adjectives
such as big, English, wonderful, words that describe the permanant or perceived qualities of a noun;
their number is unlimited. New descriptive adjectives enter the language every day, often in the fertile
world of slang.
There are two categories of descriptive adjectives;
. qualificative or qualifying adjectives , such as big, nice, complicated which express the passing or
perceived qualities of a noun, and
classifying adjectives (including absolute adjectives) such as married, second, hydraulic, unique, dead
which express permanent qualities or absolutes.
Qualifiying adjectives are "gradable", i.e. it is possible to graduate their intensity, by the addition of
an adverb of degree, such as very, quite, enough; most qualifying adjectives can also be put into
comparative or superlative forms (big, bigger, biggest).
Classifying adjectives cannot normally be graded: a person is either married or not, or dead or not;
he or she cannot be "very married", nor "more dead" than another person, at least not under normal
usage of the words
• Examples:
• My car is very old (qualifying, with a noun)
• He is old (qualifying, with a pronoun) see Pronouns)
• The old computer was much quieter than the new model (classifying)
• In the first two examples above, old is a perceived quality, and therefore gradable, in the third old has
an absolute value, with the meaning of former or previous.
■ Use of adjectives : attributive or predicative
Adjectives are used in two main ways; they can either be attributive or they can be predicative.
Attributive adjectives :
• This is the most common use of adjectives, standing next to a noun in a noun phrase. In English, simple
and complex adjectives almost always come before the noun .
• Examples:
• The big metal box
• My dear old grandfather .
• A very modern plastic dish.
• An easily recognisable face.
• A pink and green dress
• A not-too-infrequent event.
Predicative adjectives
Adjectives are said to be predicative when they are used as the complement of the
verb to be, or other similar verbs such as get, become, grow, etc.
Examples:
• The result was magnificent.
• My girlfriend is beautiful .
• The weather is getting colder.
• I grew fonder of London after living there for a month.
Adjectives in the plural
• In English, adjectives never take a plural inflexion (s) whether they are used
attributively or predicatively.
The same rule applies to some adjectives used as nouns.
• We talk about the poor, or the living, or the wounded We cannot say the poors
or the livings, or the woundeds.
• Example: The injured and the dead were evacuated by ambulance.
Many adjectives are lexical words in their own right, i.e. they exist independently of any other word,
or are the root word of a word family. For example good, bad, ugly.
Other adjectives are inflected forms of other words, derived notably from verbs. For example
charming, lost. Other adjectives can be formed from nouns, for example beautiful (from beauty) or
motionless (from motion), or even from other adjectives (for example yellowish).
One of the beauties of the English language is the simplicity with which words can be formed from
other words: all that is needed is to add the appropriate ending, and a new word is made. Here are
some examples.
Examples:
Unthinkable, doable, mendable, possible, plausible - with -able or -ible
Careless, fruitless, homeless, motionless - with less
Beautiful, hopeful, wonderful, awful, blissful - with ful
Soggy, foggy, lazy, stormy, skinny, bloody, - with -y
Smallish, greenish, darkish, - with -ish
Distinguished, bored, displaced, contented, squared - with -ed
Challenging, alarming, amazing, exciting - with -ing
Comparison of adjectives
Many qualifying adjectives can be used in a comparative or a superlative form. In most
cases, the comparative form of an adjective is made with the word more, and the
superlative form with the word most.
But with most common short monosyllabic adjectives, and some two-syllable adjectives,
the comparative is made by adding the ending -er, and the superlative with the ending -
est. There are two common adjectives with irregular comparative and superlative forms:
good, better, best, and bad, worse, worst.
Examples:
Careful, more careful, most careful
Difficult, more difficult, most difficult, Certain, more certain, most certain
Hard, harder, hardest, Black, blacker, blackest, Old, older, oldest,
Clever, cleverer, cleverest,
Large, larger, largest (just add -r and -st to adjectives ending in e)
Big, bigger, biggest , hot, hotter, hottest -
Hard, harder , warm warmer, quiet quieter -
Pretty, prettier, prettiest , heavy, heavier, heaviest
• Complete the sentences using suitable clauses/ phrases.
• (a) Industry is the ___.
• (b) A man cannot succeed in life ___.
• (c) ___ of the world are industrious.
• (d) The man ___ can maintain a sound health.
• (e) We should not like those persons ___.
• (f) I always ___.
• (g) I know the story of an industrious person ___.
• (h) That man always inspires me ___.
• (i) I have a poor uncle. He could be rich ___.
• (j) He has become poor ___ of his idleness.
• Complete the sentences using suitable clauses/ phrases.
• (a) John is fond of reading. Whenever he goes to the book fair, ___. He has a
good collection of books now.
• (b) Smoking is detrimental to health. It is high time you ___.
• (c) The students saw the teacher. No sooner had the teacher entered the
classroom than ___. 18 ___ Digital Interactive E-book
• (d) Birds fly in the sky. I wish I ___.
• (e) My mother was a philanthropist. She loved to live among the poor villagers
so that ___.
• (f) Samia is good at all of her subjects except English. She cannot compete with
her classmates because of ___.
• (g) We had to walk through a jungle. We saw a snake while we ___.
• (h) I don’t have enough money. Had I been a rich man, ___.
• (i) Death is inevitable. There is nobody who ___.
• (j) Boys, I’m going to discuss an important topic today. Be attentive to my
lecture, otherwise ___.
• Complete the sentences using suitable clauses/ phrases.
• (a) Rifat does not like ___. He knows that rich food does not contain rich
vitamins.
• (b) As Shafi is devoted to studies, all his teachers love him. He hopes to
___.
• (c) ___ is not good. We should give it up.
• (d) ___ gives no pleasure. It is always painstaking.
• (e) There is nobody ___. Hence happiness is a relative term.
• (f) Birds ___ in winter are called migratory birds. We should not kill them.
• (g) People are careful ___ in Dhaka city. They don’t waste their resource.
• (h) Man is a social being. No man can do ___.
• (i) Robinson Crusoe was born in England. His father wanted him ___.