Language Curriculum: Adjectives

Adjectives describe or give information about nouns or pronouns.

For example:-

The grey dog barked. (The adjective grey describes the noun "dog".)

The good news is that the form of an adjective does not change. It does not matter if the noun being modified is male or female, singular or plural, subject or object.

Some adjectives give us factual information about the noun - age, size colour etc (fact adjectives - can't be argued with). Some adjectives show what somebody thinks about something or somebody - nice, horrid, beautiful etc (opinion adjectives - not everyone may agree).

If you are asked questions with which, whose, what kind, or how many, you need an adjective to be able to answer.

There are different types of adjectives in the English language:

• Numeric: six, one hundred and one
• Quantitative: more, all, some, half, more than enough
• Qualitative: colour, size, smell etc.
• Possessive: my, his, their, your
• Interrogative: which, whose, what
• Demonstrative: this, that, those, these

The articles a, an, and the and the possessives my, our, your, and their are also adjectives.

Adjectives can be used to describe lots of things, from physical size, age, shape, colour, material, to more abstract things like opinion, origin and purpose. We can use adjectives together to give a detailed description of something. Adjectives that express opinions usually come before all others, but it can sometimes depend on what exactly you want to emphasise.

For example:

"That nice, big, blue bag." (You like the bag.)
"That big, nice, blue bag." (You like the colour.)

When we group adjectives together there is a general rule for the position of each type adjective, these are:-

Position	1st*	2nd*	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th
	Opinion	Size	Age	Shape	Colour	Material	Origin	Purpose
	Nice	Small	Old	Square	Black	Plastic	British	Racing
	Ugly	Big	New	Circular	Blue	Cotton	American	Running

This is just a guide as you wouldn't normally see so many adjectives in one description.

For example:

• "She had a big, ugly, old, baggy, blue, cotton, British, knitting bag." Is grammatically correct but a bit too long-winded.

* You might swap opinion and fact adjectives depending on what you wish to emphasise:-

For example:

• "She had a long, ugly nose." emphasising the length of her nose.
• "He was a silly, little man." emphasising that the man was silly.

Possesive adjectives are used to show ownership or possession.

Subject pronoun	Possessive adjective
I	my
you	your
he	his
she	her
it	its
we	our
they	their

For example:

• I own a laptop. = It is my laptop.
• You own this computer (I presume). = It is your computer.
• My husband owns a car. = It is his car.
• My sister owns a house. = It is her house.
• My dog owns a collar. = It is its collar.
• We use this website. = It is our website.
• Manchester United own a football ground. = It is their football ground.

When we compare two things or people we look at what makes them different from each other.

For example:

Tall / Short

The man on the left is taller than the man on the right. 
The man on the right is shorter than the man on the left.

Fast / Slow

 

A car is faster than a bicycle. 
A bicycle is slower than a car.

Comparative adjectives are used to show what quality one thing has more or less than the other. They normally come before any other adjectives.

For example:

Big / Small

 

The red bag is bigger than the blue bag. 
The blue bag is smaller than the red bag.

Forming the comparative

Form	Rule	For example
Words of one syllable ending in 'e'.	Add -r to the end of the word.	wide - wider
Words of one syllable, with one vowel and one consonant at the end.	Double the consonant and add -er to the end of the word.	big - bigger
Words of one syllable, with more than one vowel or more than one consonant at the end.	Add - er to the end of the word.	high - higher
Words of two syllables, ending in 'y'.	Change 'y' to 'i', and add -er to the end of the word.	happy - happier
Words of two syllables or more, not ending in 'y'.	Place 'more' before the adjective.	beautiful - more beautiful

The following adjectives are exceptions to this rule:

• 'good' becomes 'better'
• 'bad' becomes 'worse'
• 'far' becomes 'farther' or 'further'

!Note - When comparing two things like this we put than between the adjective and the thing being compared.

For example:-

• "Mount Everest is higher than Mount Snowdon."
• "Arguably, Rome is more beautiful than Paris.

The superlative is used to say what thing or person has the most of a particular quality within a group or of its kind. Superlative adjectives normally come before any other adjectives.

		Snowdon is not the highest mountain in Britain, Ben Nevis is.
Mount Snowdon is 3,559 feet high.	Ben Nevis is 4,408 feet high.

Forming the superlative

Form	Rule	For example
Words of one syllable ending in 'e'.	Add -st to the end of the word.	wide - widest
Words of one syllable, with one vowel and one consonant at the end.	Double the consonant and add -est to the end of the word.	big - biggest
Words of one syllable, with more than one vowel or more than one consonant at the end.	Add - est to the end of the word.	high - highest
Words of two syllables, ending in 'y'.	Change 'y' to 'i', and add -est to the end of the word.	happy - happiest
Words of two syllables or more, not ending in 'y'.	Place 'the most' before the adjective.	beautiful - the most beautiful

The following adjectives are exceptions:

• 'good' becomes 'the best'
• 'bad' becomes 'the worst'
• 'far' becomes 'the furthest'

For example:

• "Jill is the best student in the class ."
• "Jack is the worst student in the class."
• "In our solar system the planet Pluto is the furthest planet from the Sun."

!Note - superlatives are usually preceded by 'the'.

For example:

• "The Rio de la Plata river, on the southeast coastline of South America, is the widest river in the world."
• According to the List of World records Carol Yager (1960-1994), from Michigan, is the fattest person ever to live, weighing 725 kg (1,600 lb).
• "Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world."
• "I think that Castle Combe is the prettiest village in England."
• "Arguably, Rome is the most beautiful city in the world."