Adjectives
Definition
Adjectives
are words that describe or modify another person or thing in the sentence. The Articles — a, an, and the —
are adjectives.
- the tall professor
- the lugubrious lieutenant
- a solid commitment
- a month's pay
- a six-year-old child
- the unhappiest, richest man
If a group
of words containing a subject and verb acts as an adjective, it is called an Adjective Clause. My sister, who is much older
than I am, is an engineer. If an adjective clause is stripped of its
subject and verb, the resulting modifier becomes an Adjective Phrase: He
is the man who is keeping my family in the poorhouse.
Before
getting into other usage considerations, one general note about the use — or
over-use — of adjectives: Adjectives are frail; don't ask them to do more
work than they should. Let your broad-shouldered verbs and nouns do the
hard work of description. Be particularly cautious in your use of adjectives
that don't have much to say in the first place: interesting, beautiful,
lovely, exciting. It is your job as a writer to create beauty and
excitement and interest, and when you simply insist on its presence without showing
it to your reader — well, you're convincing no one.
Consider the
uses of modifiers in this adjectivally rich paragraph from Thomas Wolfe's Look
Homeward, Angel. (Charles Scribner's, 1929, p. 69.) Adjectives are
highlighted in this color; participles, verb forms acting as adjectives,
are highlighted in this blue. Some people would argue that words that are part
of a name — like "East India Tea House — are not really adjectival
and that possessive nouns — father's, farmer's — are not
technically adjectives, but we've included them in our analysis of Wolfe's
text.
He remembered yet the East India Tea
House at the Fair, the sandalwood, the turbans, and the robes, the cool
interior and the smell of India tea; and he had felt now the nostalgic thrill
of dew-wet mornings in Spring, the cherry scent, the cool clarion earth, the
wet loaminess of the garden, the pungent breakfast smells and the floating snow
of blossoms. He knew the inchoate sharp excitement of hot dandelions in young
earth; in July, of watermelons bedded in sweet hay, inside a farmer's covered
wagon; of cantaloupe and crated peaches; and the scent of orange rind, bitter-sweet,
before a fire of coals. He knew the good male smell of his father's
sitting-room; of the smooth worn leather sofa, with the gaping horse-hair rent;
of the blistered varnished wood upon the hearth; of the heated calf-skin
bindings; of the flat moist plug of apple tobacco, stuck with a red flag; of
wood-smoke and burnt leaves in October; of the brown tired autumn earth; of
honey-suckle at night; of warm nasturtiums, of a clean ruddy farmer who comes
weekly with printed butter, eggs, and milk; of fat limp underdone bacon and of
coffee; of a bakery-oven in the wind; of large deep-hued stringbeans
smoking-hot and seasoned well with salt and butter; of a room of old pine
boards in which books and carpets have been stored, long closed; of Concord
grapes in their long white baskets.
An abundance
of adjectives like this would be uncommon in contemporary prose. Whether we
have lost something or not is left up to you.
Position of Adjectives
Unlike Adverbs, which often seem capable of
popping up almost anywhere in a sentence, adjectives nearly always appear
immediately before the noun or noun phrase that they modify. Sometimes they
appear in a string of adjectives, and when they do, they appear in a set order
according to category. (See Below.) When indefinite pronouns — such
as something, someone, anybody — are modified by an adjective, the adjective
comes after the pronoun:
Anyone capable of doing something horrible
to someone nice should be punished.
Something wicked this way comes.
Something wicked this way comes.
And there
are certain adjectives that, in combination with certain words, are always
"postpositive" (coming after the thing they modify):
The president elect, heir apparent
to the Glitzy fortune, lives in New York proper.
See, also,
the note on a- adjectives, below, for the position of such
words as "ablaze, aloof, aghast."
Adjectives
can express degrees of modification:
- Gladys is a rich woman, but Josie is richer than Gladys, and Sadie is the richest woman in town.
Positive
|
Comparative
|
Superlative
|
rich
|
richer
|
richest
|
lovely
|
lovelier
|
loveliest
|
beautiful
|
more
beautiful
|
most
beautiful
|
Certain
adjectives have irregular forms in the comparative and superlative degrees:
Irregular Comparative and Superlative Forms
|
||
good
|
better
|
best
|
bad
|
worse
|
worst
|
little
|
less
|
least
|
much
many some |
more
|
most
|
far
|
further
|
furthest
|
Be careful
not to form comparatives or superlatives of adjectives which already express an
extreme of comparison — unique, for instance — although it probably is
possible to form comparative forms of most adjectives: something can be more
perfect, and someone can have a fuller figure. People who argue that
one woman cannot be more pregnant than another have never been nine-months
pregnant with twins.
Grammar's Response
According to
Bryan Garner, "complete" is one of those adjectives that does not
admit of comparative degrees. We could say, however, "more nearly
complete." I am sure that I have not been consistent in my application of
this principle in the Guide (I can hear myself, now, saying something like
"less adequate" or "more preferable" or "less
fatal"). Other adjectives that Garner would include in this list are as
follows:
absolute
|
impossible
|
principal
|
adequate
|
inevitable
|
stationary
|
chief
|
irrevocable
|
sufficient
|
complete
|
main
|
unanimous
|
devoid
|
manifest
|
unavoidable
|
entire
|
minor
|
unbroken
|
fatal
|
paramount
|
unique
|
final
|
perpetual
|
universal
|
ideal
|
preferable
|
whole
|
From The
Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Styleby Bryan Garner. Copyright
1995 by Bryan A. Garner. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
www.oup-usa.org, and used with the gracious consent of Oxford University Press.
Be careful,
also, not to use more along with a comparative adjective formed with -er
nor to use most along with a superlative adjective formed with -est
(e.g., do not write that something is more heavier or most heaviest).
The as —
as construction is used to create a comparison expressing equality:
- He is as foolish as he is large.
- She is as bright as her mother.
Both adverbs
and adjectives in their comparative and superlative forms can be accompanied by
premodifiers, single words and phrases, that intensify the degree.
- We were a lot more careful this time.
- He works a lot less carefully than the other jeweler in town.
- We like his work so much better.
- You'll get your watch back all the faster.
The same
process can be used to downplay the degree:
- The weather this week has been somewhat better.
- He approaches his schoolwork a little less industriously than his brother does.
And
sometimes a set phrase, usually an informal noun phrase, is used for this
purpose:
- He arrived a whole lot sooner than we expected.
- That's a heck of a lot better.
If the
intensifier very accompanies the superlative, a determiner is also
required:
- She is wearing her very finest outfit for the interview.
- They're doing the very best they can.
Occasionally,
the comparative or superlative form appears with a determiner and the thing
being modified is understood:
- Of all the wines produced in Connecticut, I like this one the most.
- The quicker you finish this project, the better.
- Of the two brothers, he is by far the faster.
Authority
for this section: A University Grammar of English by Randolph Quirk and
Sidney Greenbaum. Longman Group: Essex, England. 1993. Used with permission.
When
making a comparison between quantities we often have to make a choice between
the words fewer and less. Generally, when we're talking about
countable things, we use the word fewer; when we're talking about
measurable quantities that we cannot count, we use the word less.
"She had fewer chores, but she also had less energy."
The managers at our local Stop & Shop seem to have mastered this: they've
changed the signs at the so-called express lanes from "Twelve Items or
Less" to "Twelve Items or Fewer." Whether that's an actual
improvement, we'll leave up to you.
We do,
however, definitely use less when referring to statistical or
numerical expressions:
In these
situations, it's possible to regard the quantities as sums of
countable measures.
|
Taller than I
/ me ??
|
When
making a comparison with "than" do we end with a subject form or
object form, "taller than I/she" or "taller than me/her."
The correct response is "taller than I/she." We are looking for the
subject form: "He is taller than I am/she is tall." (Except we
leave out the verb in the second clause, "am" or "is.")
Some good writers, however, will argue that the word "than" should
be allowed to function as a preposition. If we can say "He is tall like
me/her," then (if "than" could be prepositional like like)
we should be able to say, "He is taller than me/her." It's an
interesting argument, but — for now, anyway — in formal, academic prose, use
the subject form in such comparisons.
We also
want to be careful in a sentence such as "I like him better than she/her."
The "she" would mean that you like this person better than she
likes him; the "her" would mean that you like this male person
better than you like that female person. (To avoid ambiguity and the slippery
use of than, we could write "I like him better than she
does" or "I like him better than I like her.")
|
More than /
over ??
|
In the
United States, we usually use "more than" in countable numerical
expressions meaning "in excess of" or "over." In England,
there is no such distinction. For instance, in the U.S., some editors would
insist on "more than 40,000 traffic deaths in one year," whereas in
the UK, "over 40,000 traffic deaths" would be acceptable. Even in
the U.S., however, you will commonly hear "over" in numerical
expressions of age, time, or height: "His sister is over forty; she's
over six feet tall. We've been waiting well over two hours for her."
|
It would
take a linguistic philosopher to explain why we say "little brown
house" and not "brown little house" or why we say "red
Italian sports car" and not "Italian red sports car." The order
in which adjectives in a series sort themselves out is perplexing for people
learning English as a second language. Most other languages dictate a similar
order, but not necessarily the same order. It takes a lot of practice with a
language before this order becomes instinctive, because the order often seems
quite arbitrary (if not downright capricious). There is, however, a pattern.
You will find many exceptions to the pattern in the table below, but it is
definitely important to learn the pattern of adjective order if it is not part
of what you naturally bring to the language.
The
categories in the following table can be described as follows:
- Determiners — articles and other limiters. See Determiners
- Observation — postdeterminers and limiter adjectives (e.g., a real hero, a perfect idiot) and adjectives subject to subjective measure (e.g., beautiful, interesting)
- Size and Shape — adjectives subject to objective measure (e.g., wealthy, large, round)
- Age — adjectives denoting age (e.g., young, old, new, ancient)
- Color — adjectives denoting color (e.g., red, black, pale)
- Origin — denominal adjectives denoting source of noun (e.g., French, American, Canadian)
- Material — denominal adjectives denoting what something is made of (e.g., woolen, metallic, wooden)
- Qualifier — final limiter, often regarded as part of the noun (e.g., rocking chair, hunting cabin, passenger car, book cover)
THE ROYAL
ORDER OF ADJECTIVES
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|||||||||
Determiner
|
Observation
|
Physical Description
|
Origin
|
Material
|
Qualifier
|
Noun
|
|||
|
Size
|
Shape
|
Age
|
Color
|
|
||||
a
|
beautiful
|
|
|
old
|
|
Italian
|
|
touring
|
car
|
an
|
expensive
|
|
|
antique
|
|
|
silver
|
|
mirror
|
four
|
gorgeous
|
|
long-
stemmed |
|
red
|
|
silk
|
|
roses
|
her
|
|
|
short
|
|
black
|
|
|
|
hair
|
our
|
|
big
|
|
old
|
|
English
|
|
|
sheepdog
|
those
|
|
|
square
|
|
|
|
wooden
|
hat
|
boxes
|
that
|
dilapidated
|
little
|
|
|
|
|
|
hunting
|
cabin
|
several
|
|
enormous
|
|
young
|
|
American
|
|
basketball
|
players
|
some
|
delicious
|
|
|
|
|
Thai
|
|
|
food
|
|
This chart is probably too wide to
print on a standard piece of paper. If you click HERE, you will get a one-page duplicate of this chart,
which you can print out on a regular piece of paper.
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It would be
folly, of course, to run more than two or three (at the most) adjectives
together. Furthermore, when adjectives belong to the same class, they become
what we call coordinated adjectives, and you will want to put a comma between
them: the inexpensive, comfortable shoes. The rule for inserting the comma
works this way: if you could have inserted a conjunction — and or but
— between the two adjectives, use a comma. We could say these are
"inexpensive but comfortable shoes," so we would use a comma between
them (when the "but" isn't there). When you have three coordinated
adjectives, separate them all with commas, but don't insert a comma between the
last adjective and the noun (in spite of the temptation to do so because you
often pause there):
a popular, respected, and good
looking student
When an
adjective owes its origins to a proper noun, it should probably be capitalized.
Thus we write about Christian music, French fries, the English Parliament, the
Ming Dynasty, a Faulknerian style, Jeffersonian democracy. Some periods of time
have taken on the status of proper adjectives: the Nixon era, a
Renaissance/Romantic/Victorian poet (but a contemporary novelist and medieval
writer). Directional and seasonal adjectives are not capitalized unless they're
part of a title:
We took the northwest route during
the spring thaw. We stayed there until the town's annual Fall Festival of Small
Appliances.
When the
definite article, the, is combined with an adjective describing a class
or group of people, the resulting phrase can act as a noun: the poor, the rich,
the oppressed, the homeless, the lonely, the unlettered, the unwashed, the
gathered, the dear departed. The difference between a Collective Noun (which is usually regarded as
singular but which can be plural in certain contexts) and a collective
adjective is that the latter is always plural and requires a plural verb:
- The rural poor have been ignored by the media.
- The rich of Connecticut are responsible.
- The elderly are beginning to demand their rights.
- The young at heart are always a joy to be around.
Adjectival Opposites
The opposite
or the negative aspect of an adjective can be formed in a number of ways. One
way, of course, is to find an adjective to mean the opposite — an antonym. The
opposite of beautiful is ugly, the opposite of tall is short.
A thesaurus can help you find an appropriate opposite. Another way to form the
opposite of an adjective is with a number of prefixes. The opposite of fortunate
is unfortunate, the opposite of prudent is imprudent, the
opposite of considerate is inconsiderate, the opposite of honorable
is dishonorable, the opposite of alcoholic is nonalcoholic,
the opposite of being properly filed is misfiled. If you are not
sure of the spelling of adjectives modified in this way by prefixes (or which
is the appropriate prefix), you will have to consult a dictionary, as the rules
for the selection of a prefix are complex and too shifty to be trusted. The meaning
itself can be tricky; for instance, flammable and inflammable mean the same
thing.
A third
means for creating the opposite of an adjective is to combine it with less
or least to create a comparison which points in the opposite direction.
Interesting shades of meaning and tone become available with this usage. It is
kinder to say that "This is the least beautiful city in the state."
than it is to say that "This is the ugliest city in the state." (It
also has a slightly different meaning.) A candidate for a job can still be worthy
and yet be "less worthy of consideration" than another
candidate. It's probably not a good idea to use this construction with an
adjective that is already a negative: "He is less unlucky than his
brother," although that is not the same thing as saying he is luckier than
his brother. Use the comparative less when the comparison is between two
things or people; use the superlative least when the comparison is among
many things or people.
- My mother is less patient than my father.
- Of all the new sitcoms, this is my least favorite show.
Good versus
Well
|
In both
casual speech and formal writing, we frequently have to choose between the
adjective good and the adverb well. With most verbs,
there is no contest: when modifying a verb, use the adverb.
He swims well.
He knows only too well who
the murderer is.
However,
when using a linking verb or a verb that has to do with the
five human senses, you want to use the adjective instead.
How are you? I'm feeling good,
thank you.
After a bath, the baby smells so good.
Even after my careful paint job,
this room doesn't look good.
Many
careful writers, however, will use well after linking verbs relating
to health, and this is perfectly all right. In fact, to say that you are good
or that you feel good usually implies not only that you're OK
physically but also that your spirits are high.
"How are you?"
"I am well, thank
you."
|
Bad versus
Badly
|
When your
cat died (assuming you loved your cat), did you feel bad or badly?
Applying the same rule that applies to good versus well, use
the adjective form after verbs that have to do with human feelings. You felt bad.
If you said you felt badly, it would mean that something was wrong
with your faculties for feeling.
|
Other Adjectival Considerations
Review the
section on Compound Nouns and
Modifiers for the
formation of modifiers created when words are connected: a four-year-old child,
a nineteenth-century novel, an empty-headed fool.
Review the
section on Possessives for a distinction between
possessive forms and "adjectival labels." (Do you belong to a Writers
Club or a Writers' Club?)
Adjectives that are really Participles, verb forms with -ing and -ed
endings, can be troublesome for some students. It is one thing to be a frightened
child; it is an altogether different matter to be a frightening child.
Do you want to go up to your professor after class and say that you are confused
or that you are confusing? Generally, the -ed ending means that
the noun so described ("you") has a passive relationship with
something — something (the subject matter, the presentation) has bewildered you
and you are confused. The -ing ending means that the noun
described has a more active role — you are not making any sense so you are
confusing (to others, including your professor).
The -ed
ending modifiers are often accompanied by prepositions (these are not the only
choices):
- We were amazed at all the circus animals.
- We were amused by the clowns.
- We were annoyed by the elephants.
- We were bored by the ringmaster.
- We were confused by the noise.
- We were disappointed by the motorcycle daredevils.
- We were disappointed in their performance.
- We were embarrassed by my brother.
- We were exhausted from all the excitement.
- We were excited by the lion-tamer.
- We were excited about the high-wire act, too.
- We were frightened by the lions.
- We were introduced to the ringmaster.
- We were interested in the tent.
- We were irritated by the heat.
- We were opposed to leaving early.
- We were satisfied with the circus.
- We were shocked at the level of noise under the big tent.
- We were surprised by the fans' response.
- We were surprised at their indifference.
- We were tired of all the lights after a while.
- We were worried about the traffic leaving the parking lot.
The most
common of the so-called a- adjectives are ablaze, afloat, afraid,
aghast, alert, alike, alive, alone, aloof, ashamed, asleep, averse, awake,
aware. These adjectives will primarily show up as predicate adjectives (i.e.,
they come after a linking verb).
- The children were ashamed.
- The professor remained aloof.
- The trees were ablaze.
Occasionally,
however, you will find a- adjectives before the word they modify: the
alert patient, the aloof physician. Most of them, when found before the word
they modify, are themselves modified: the nearly awake student, the terribly
alone scholar. And a- adjectives are sometimes modified by "very much":
very much afraid, very much alone, very much ashamed, etc.
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