Adjectives : English Grammar

What Is An Adjective?

Simply put adjectives are descriptive words. Adjectives are used to describe or give information about things, ideas and people: nouns or pronouns.

For Example:

• The black dog barked. (The adjective black describes the noun "dog".)
• The most common question an adjective might answer is "What kind of ...?"

The good news is that in English the form of an adjective does not change, once you have learnt it that's it and it does not matter if the noun being described 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 etc.

• Quantitative: more, all, some, half, more than enough etc.

• Qualitative: colour, size, smell etc.

• Possessive: my, his, their, your etc.

• Interrogative: which, whose, what etc.

• Demonstrative: this, that, those, these etc.

Note - The articles a, an, and the are a special kind of adjective called articles, and the possessives my, our, your, and their are sometimes known as possessive adjectives.