An adjective (shortened as ADJ) is a word that describes or gives more details about a noun or a group of words that include a noun. Its purpose is to add information to the noun. Adjectives are one of the main types of words in English. In the past, adjectives were grouped with nouns. Today, some words that were once considered adjectives, such as "the," "this," and "my," are now classified as determiners.

Etymology

The word "adjective" comes from the Latin phrase nōmen adjectīvum, which is based on the Ancient Greek phrase ἐπίθετον ὄνομα (written in Roman letters as epítheton ónoma), meaning "additional name." This is also the origin of the English word "epithet." In the grammar traditions of Latin and Greek, adjectives were treated like nouns because they changed form based on gender, number, and case (a process called declension). Because of this, they were seen as a kind of noun. The words that are now called nouns were then referred to as "substantive nouns" (nōmen substantīvum). In the past, English used the terms "noun substantive" and "noun adjective," but these terms are no longer used today.

Types of use

In some languages, adjectives can come before a noun or after a noun. The position of an adjective before or after a noun may depend on grammar rules, the meaning of the sentence, and writing style. In English, adjectives are usually grouped into three types.

Distribution

Adjectives are a part of speech found in most languages. In some languages, words that act like adjectives are grouped with other word classes, such as nouns or verbs. For example, in the phrase "a Ford car," the word "Ford" is a noun, but it acts like an adjective to describe the noun "car." This is called a noun adjunct.

In some languages, adjectives can function as nouns. For example, in Spanish, the phrase "un rojo" means "a red [one]." This is also possible in English, such as when using "the rich" or "the poor." These adjectives used as nouns often refer to people and are more commonly used in plural forms, like "Reds" or "the oppressed." Using singular forms, such as "a poor" or "a gay," is considered old-fashioned and is generally avoided.

Some languages use verbs instead of adjectives to describe qualities. For example, a language might have a verb meaning "to be big," and use a structure like "big-being house" to describe a "big house." This is how grammar works in languages like Standard Chinese and Korean.

Languages use adjectives in different ways. For example, English uses the adjective "hungry" in the phrase "to be hungry," but Dutch, French, and Spanish use phrases like "to have hunger" ("honger hebben," "avoir faim," "tener hambre"). Similarly, Hebrew uses the adjective "zaqūq" (meaning "in need of") where English uses the verb "to need."

In languages with adjectives as a word class, new adjectives are often created through processes like adding prefixes or suffixes. However, Bantu languages have only a few adjectives and do not easily create new ones. In Japanese, native adjectives (i-adjectives) are limited in number, but nouns can be used in the genitive form to act like adjectives. There is also a separate group of adjectives called na-adjectives, which can be expanded.

Adverbs

Many languages, including English, separate adjectives and adverbs. Adjectives describe nouns and pronouns, while adverbs mainly describe verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. Not all languages make this exact separation. In English, some words can act as both adjectives and adverbs. For example, the word "fast" is an adjective in "a fast car" (describing the noun "car") and an adverb in "he drove fast" (describing the verb "drove").

In Dutch and German, adjectives and adverbs often look the same. Many grammarians do not clearly separate them, but differences in how words change can show their roles. In German, the word "klug" ("clever(ly)") changes its ending when used as an adjective describing a noun but does not change when used as an adverb. Whether these are different parts of speech or different uses of the same part of speech depends on how the language is analyzed. German linguistic terms use "adverbiale" and "adjektivische Formen" to describe adverbs and adjectives, but both are called "Eigenschaftswörter" ("property words") in German.

Determiners

Linguists today separate determiners from adjectives, treating them as two distinct types of words. In the past, determiners were sometimes classified as adjectives. Determiners are not nouns or pronouns but instead describe a noun-related part of a sentence in a specific situation. They usually do this by showing definiteness (such as "a" versus "the"), quantity (such as "one" versus "some" versus "many"), or other similar features.

Adjective phrases

An adjective is the main part of an adjective phrase. A simple adjective phrase has only the adjective, such as "strong." More complex phrases may include adverbs that describe the adjective, like "very strong," or other words that add more information, such as "worth several dollars," "full of toys," or "eager to please." In English, adjective phrases that include these added words usually come after the noun they describe, as in "an evildoer devoid of redeeming qualities."

Other modifiers of nouns

In many languages, including English, nouns can be used to describe other nouns. These nouns, called attributive nouns or noun adjuncts, usually do not describe the noun directly, unlike adjectives. For example, "a beautiful park" uses an adjective to describe the park, but "a car park" uses the noun "car" to explain the type of park. The modifier noun can show origin, such as "Virginia reel," purpose, like "work clothes," or the person or thing involved in an action, such as "man eater" or "child actor." These modifiers can express almost any relationship between the words. Adjectives can also be created from nouns, as seen in words like "boyish," "birdlike," "behavioral," "famous," "manly," and "angelic."

Many languages use participle forms of verbs to act as modifiers. These can stand alone or be part of a phrase. Sometimes, participles change into adjectives. In English, the past participle "relieved" (from the verb "relieve") is used as an adjective in sentences like "I am so relieved to see you." Other examples include "spoken" (from "speak") and "going" (from "go"), which act as adjectives in phrases like "the spoken word" and "the going rate."

Other ways to modify nouns include prepositional phrases, such as "a rebel without a cause," relative clauses, like "the man who wasn't there," and infinitive phrases, such as "a cake to die for." Some nouns can take complements, like content clauses, as in "the idea that I would do that." However, these complements are not typically considered modifiers. For more details about how nouns can be modified, refer to "Components of noun phrases."

Distinction between nouns and adjectives

In Australian Aboriginal languages, the difference between adjectives and nouns is usually not clear. Many of these languages use only nouns, or nouns with a few special word parts, to describe other nouns. In languages where the difference between adjectives and nouns is slight, one way to tell them apart is that an adjective can sometimes replace a shortened noun phrase, but a noun cannot. For example, in Bardi, the adjective "moorrooloo" (meaning "little") in the phrase "moorrooloo baawa" (meaning "little child") can stand alone to mean "the little one," but the noun "aamba" (meaning "man") in the phrase "aamba baawa" (meaning "male child") cannot replace the whole phrase to mean "the male one." In other languages, like Warlpiri, nouns and adjectives are grouped together because they share similar roles in sentences. The only difference is that some words refer to things (like nouns in English), while others describe qualities (like adjectives in English).

Order

In many languages, descriptive words usually follow a specific order. In English, the typical order of adjectives is: opinion, size, age or shape, color, origin, material, and purpose. Some sources, such as the Cambridge Dictionary, note that shape often comes before age in this sequence.

Words that identify or limit a noun, such as articles (e.g., "the"), numerals (e.g., "three"), and other limiters (e.g., "three blind mice"), usually appear before descriptive adjectives. While certain combinations of these words can be used, they are more limited in their placement than adjectives. Typically, only one such word appears before a noun or noun phrase, including any descriptive adjectives.

This means that in English, adjectives describing size usually come before those describing age ("little old," not "old little"), and adjectives describing age generally come before those describing color ("old white," not "white old"). For example, the phrase "One nice little old round white brick house" follows this pattern. When multiple adjectives of the same type are used, they are arranged from general to specific, such as "lovely intelligent person" or "old medieval castle."

This order may be stricter in some languages than in others. For example, in Spanish, the order is often a default (unmarked) structure, allowing for some flexibility. In languages like Tagalog, the order of adjectives is as strict as in English.

In some cases, the usual adjective order in English can be changed. For example, when an adjective is emphasized, it may appear earlier in the sentence. A common example is "the big bad wolf," which deviates from the typical order of "the bad big wolf."

Due to influences from French, English includes some adjectives that follow the noun, known as postpositive adjectives. Examples include "time immemorial" and "attorney general." Some adjectives can change meaning depending on their position. For instance, "proper" in "a proper town" means "a real town," while "the town proper" refers to "the town itself, not the suburbs." In shortened sentences, adjectives can follow nouns, as in "tell me something new" or "We ate the pizza cold."

Comparison (degrees)

In many languages, some adjectives can be compared, and the way they are compared is called degree. For example, one person might be "polite," another might be "more polite," and a third might be the "most polite" among them. The word "more" changes the adjective "polite" to show a comparison, and "most" changes it to show the highest level of comparison (called a superlative).

Languages that allow adjectives to be compared use different methods to show these comparisons. Some languages do not have separate forms for comparing and being the most. Others use adjectives without special comparative forms, instead using other tools, like case-marking, to show differences. For example, in some Australian Aboriginal languages, the ablative case (a type of grammatical marker) is used to show one thing has more of a quality than another.

In English, many adjectives can be changed to show comparison by adding the suffixes "-er" (for comparative) and "-est" (for superlative). Sometimes, letters are added before these suffixes, as seen in the word "far" (becoming "farther" or "farthest").

Some adjectives do not follow these rules and are irregular. For example, "good" becomes "better" and "best." Others may have both regular and irregular forms, like "bad" (worse, worst) and "badly" (worse, worst).

Another way to show comparison is by using the words "more" and "most." However, there is no simple rule to decide which method is correct for each adjective. Generally, shorter adjectives and those from Old English tend to use suffixes, while longer adjectives and those from French, Latin, or Greek often use "more" and "most." Sometimes, the sound of the word determines the choice.

Some adjectives cannot naturally be compared. For example, "ultimate" is already absolute in meaning, so saying "more ultimate" or "most ultimate" might not make sense. These adjectives are called non-comparable or absolute. However, native speakers sometimes use these forms playfully. For example, even though "pregnant" is not usually compared, someone might say, "She looks more and more pregnant each day."

Comparative and superlative forms are not always used for comparison. In English, comparatives can suggest uncertainty, as in "John is more the shy-and-retiring type," where "more" does not compare John to others but instead shows a tentative idea. In Italian, superlatives like "bellissimo" (meaning "most beautiful") are often used to strongly emphasize an adjective, similar to "extremely beautiful."

Restrictiveness

Descriptive words and other modifiers that go before nouns can be used in two ways: restrictively or non-restrictively. Restrictive modifiers help to identify exactly which noun is being discussed, narrowing its meaning. Non-restrictive modifiers add extra details about a noun that is already clearly identified.

For example:
In "he avoids difficult tasks," the word "difficult" is restrictive because it helps to point out which tasks are being avoided, making it clear these are the hard ones rather than the easy ones.
In "the aforementioned task, which is difficult," the word "difficult" is non-restrictive because the task is already known, and the adjective simply adds more information about it.

In some languages, like Spanish, the way a modifier is placed can show whether it is restrictive or non-restrictive. For example, "la tarea difícil" means "the difficult task" in the sense of "the task that is difficult" (restrictive), while "la difícil tarea" means "the difficult task" in the sense of "the task, which is difficult" (non-restrictive). In English, adjectives themselves do not show restrictiveness, but relative clauses do. For example, "the man who recognized me was there" is restrictive, while "the man, who recognized me, was there" is non-restrictive.

Agreement

In some languages, adjectives change their form to match the gender, case, and number of the noun they describe. This is called agreement or concord. It often happens through changes at the end of the word, as seen in Latin:

In Celtic languages, such as Irish, agreement is shown by softening the first sound of the adjective when it describes a feminine singular noun:

A difference exists between how adjectives are used before a noun (attributive) and after a verb (predicative). In English, adjectives never change to match the noun. In French, adjectives always change to match the noun. In German, adjectives change only when they are used before a noun. In Hungarian, adjectives change only when they are used after a verb.

Semantics

Linguist Barbara Partee groups adjectives based on their meaning into intersective, subsective, or nonsubsective categories. Nonsubsective adjectives are further divided into plain nonsubsective and privative types.