Know How to Use Adjectives Effectively
on October 15, 2020
Adjectives are words that can make your essay interesting, beautiful, and informative. Oh, yes, these words – “interesting”, “beautiful”, “informative” – are adjectives, and notice how they added flavor to the preceding sentence. To write essays that work, know how to use adjectives effectively.
Adjective
An adjective is a word that describes a noun (or a pronoun). That’s fairly easy to remember, right?
Go ahead and describe yourself, your best friend, your house, and your country. Below are sample sentences with adjectives:
“I am very ambitious and imaginative.”
“Ronaldo, my best friend, is so athletic he’d rather play than eat.”
“My house is the largest in our neighborhood.”
“The United States of America is rich and powerful.”
“ambitious”, “imaginative,” “best”, “athletic”, “largest”, “rich”, “powerful.”
Use your adjectives to add color, flavor, or life to your sentence.
For example, notice that this sentence is very plain and simple: “My dog ran behind the store.”
See what happens after we add adjectives: “My loyal dog ran behind the red store.”
The adjective “loyal” gives character to my pet, making him more relatable to readers, while “red” triggers the imagination so that readers could see the store in their mind.
Adjective Clause
Let’s make adjectives more interesting by talking about the adjective clause. In many cases, you need more than one word to describe a noun. An adjective clause makes use of a relative adverb or relative pronoun (who, where, when, which, whom, whose, or that), a subject, and a verb to modify a noun. Take a look:
“America, which is proud of its democracy, always promotes life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
“Professional athletes, who practice the most, always turn up winners.”
“I am always happy when I’m among friends.”
These sentences still have a complete thought without the adjective clause, but you have to agree that they make more sense with it.
“America always promotes life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
“Professional athletes always turn up winners.”
“I am always happy.”
An adjective clause provides more information to your readers. If you want to practice more by writing your own examples of sentences with an adjective clause, visit LingualBox and let one of their online tutors guide you. Also, ask about the adjective phrase, which is quite similar to the adjective clause.
Going back to adjectives, know that there are levels of description. Not all things are alike, and so you need different levels of descriptive adjectives to say exactly what you mean. For example, if you are describing two people, you will say this:
“John is a nice person, but Cynthia is much nicer.”
“I am good enough, but my cousin is definitely better.”
“Lebron James is a great basketball player, but fans agree that the late Kobe Bryant is greater.”
Comparative Form
Nicer, better, and greater – did you see what these words did to the sentence? These are adjectives in comparative form. You need them when comparing two nouns. However, when comparing a noun to more than two people or objects, you need to use adjectives in the superlative form. They are at the top of the scale.
“Among all my friends, I consider Jamal the nicest.”
“When it comes to math, my uncle is the best.”
“Many sports experts agree that Michael Jordan is the greatest NBA player ever.”
Regular Adjectives
Keep in mind, adjectives always come in scales: descriptive, comparative, superlative. For regular adjectives, you simply add a suffix or the words “more” and “most” before them to complete the scale.
Tall, taller, tallest
Short, shorter, shortest
Happy, happier, happiest
Amazing, more amazing, most amazing
Difficult, more difficult, most difficult
Beautiful, more beautiful, most beautiful
Irregular Adjectives
Irregular adjectives, on the other, take on completely different words when going up the scale:
Good, better, best
Bad, worse, worst
Little, less, least
Conclusion
There are so many adjectives in the English vocabulary that we can’t write all of them here. Visit LingualBox to see more adjectives and how they look in their comparative and superlative forms.
There are indeed so many adjectives in the English vocabulary, and in most cases, you use more than one adjective to describe a noun. In such cases, keep in mind that you cannot just place a series of adjectives in the order you want them to come. Know the correct and proper adjective order. Here it is: determiner – opinion – size – shape – age – color – origin – material – purpose.
For example: “The pretty, large, square, 8-year-old, black, American, silver, running car belongs to me.”
This sentence is too long, and you may not need all of these adjectives most of the time, but just in case you do, this is the order they should come.
| Determiner: | the, a, an |
|---|---|
| Opinion: | lovely, silly, new, pretty |
| Size: | little, tall, big, gigantic |
| Shape: | flat, round, triangular, rectangular |
| Age: | new, young, old, 18-year-old |
| Color: | red, blue, yellow, green |
| Origin: | French, British, Asian, Swiss |
| Material: | gold, cotton, silver |
| Purpose: | writing, rolling, sleeping, roasting |
“A funny and lovely, gigantic, red, and blue French mascot.”
“An amazing, 10-year-old Swiss equipment.”
“The brave, young, American soldier.”
“A new gold shimmering coin.”
“The flat and round, Asian silver bullet.”
These are just some of the basic things you should know to begin using adjectives effectively in your sentences and compositions. Keep working on it by practicing, writing, and composing in English. There are more things to discover about adjectives, and so it is helpful if you stay connected with LingualBox.
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