What is an Adjective?

sloppy dog ​​posing in front of a yellow background

Basic things

Adjectives are words that describe something or someone. Dirty, pale, caring, And special are all adjectives. They often (but not always) appear immediately before what they are describing. Here are some examples:

“ONE sloppy dog sitting in the window.” (so messy is an adjective, and dog is what is described.)

“She wears a purple shirt.” (Purple is an adjective, and shirt is what is described.)

“Birthday seems special.” (Special is an adjective, and birthday is what is described.)

Some adjectives that describe qualities – such as spiciness – can vary in number or degree. They usually do this by changing the form (usually by adding -er or -est): you might like your food more more spicy than others in your family, or pride in your ability to handle the hottest hot fever in the market. But adjectives can also be used with adverbs like more, most, less, very, slightly, etc for this purpose. Beautiful is an example of an adjective whose degree can only be modified in this way; you can say that a picture is more beautiful than the other, but you won’t be more beautiful.

Comparative and superlative adjectives

The question of whether you should modify an adjective with -er or -est or if you should use than or most of is one of the difficulties. A very general rule (with many exceptions) is -er or -est can be used for adjectives of a single syllable (like round or plane), than or most of used for words with three or more syllables (like beautiful), and there is no clear rule for two-syllable adjectives. (Read more about modifying adjectives)

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Other roles of adjectives

In addition to describing qualities of nouns and pronouns, adjectives can modify them by constraining or limiting their meaning. Take numbers, for example: “fifteen small cake,” “zero lest.” Likewise, although they are often used as pronouns, this, that, this, And other things Can also be used as an adjective:This Very informative article.”

Other parts of speech: what is an adverb? What is a noun? What are prepositions? What is a verb?

Other articles you may be interested in: Adjectives that look like nouns Nouns that look like adjectives How do you modify an adjective?

Categories: Usage Notes
Source: vothisaucamau.edu.vn

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