What is an Adjective?

Adjectives: The Coolest Words in English

An adjective is a word that modifies and gives more information about a noun or pronoun. We often use these words to create vibrant sentences with flair and flavor. In addition, they provide background information, such as facts or opinions, about each noun. Here’s a informative site that describes how words modify nouns.

As an example, let’s discuss this simple sentence:

Her boyfriend drove his car to the prom.

Pretty dull and boring right? That’s because there aren’t any describing words giving us more information about the people, places, or things. Now, look at this sentence…

Her good-looking boyfriend drove his brand spanking, new, red sports car to the prom.

Much better, isn’t it? It’s easy to capture the attention of your reader with descriptive words. Plus, they paint a clear picture while bringing your sentences to life.

Quick tip: Citing your work is just as important as understanding modifying words. Impress your teacher on your next paper by reading about APA format before you continue.

Interjections can also bring sentences to life. Click here to learn more about adding an interjection into your writing.

What are the Easy to Use Modifying Words?

Here is a list of adjectives that you may find easy to use. They include:

First, last, some, good, bad, any, new, old, young, long, all, short, large, small, few, early, and late.

In the list above there are two different categories of describing words. They’re known as qualitative and quantitative describing words. Let’s learn more about these interesting words.

Already have modifying words down? Discover the skills of serious scholars by taking notes on MLA format instead.

Qualitative Adjective Definition

First, there are qualitative words. These describe certain qualities. For instance, tall, bad, young, and big are qualitative words.

John is very tall and slender for his age, unlike his small, stout cousin.

Next, we have qualitative words. These words don’t deal with characteristics. Instead, quantitative words explain quantity. You can tell the quantity of a noun with words like some, any, all, and few.

Can you give me back all my money, or at least half?

Thus, qualitative words explain your personal judgement, while quantitative words describe the quantity.

Need additional help with describing words for an upcoming paper? BibMe Plus’s nifty grammar check gives helpful tips. Looking for information about other parts of speech? Check out these two pages: Verb and Adverb.

What is an Adjective? Here Are the Different Types.

Here are some other categories of modifying words to learn. Understanding this list of adjectives will improve your English skills.

Appearance words include clean, dirty, handsome, ugly and plain.

Her magnificent technicolored coat was the most glamorous garment I had ever seen.

Feeling words include happy, sad, kind, lovely, pleasant and successful.

I felt strangely confident and surprisingly comfortable while handing in my research assignment last week.

Shape words include curved, chubby, fat, thin, deep, shallow, etc.

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.

What’s the Order of Modifying Words in a Sentence?

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.

Sometimes, however, they come after the noun.

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.

Or they appear after demonstratives such as this, that, these, and those.

Those three chocolate chip cookies are mine.

So, in conclusion if your friend ever asks you, “what is an adjective?” you can reply, “it makes your writing and speaking more interesting by adding clarity to sentences.” It’s something you’ll never forget if you remember to be bold and be brilliant by using creative modifying words.

Before you go, why not save time on your next academic assignment? Learn how BibMe Plus makes citing sources using APA, MLA, and more styles incredibly easy.

We understand that parts of speech and grammar can be tricky. That’s why we created other helpful pages. Learn more about what a preposition, conjunction, and determiner are.