Descriptive Adjectives Examples

Adjectives are words that describe a noun or pronoun and/or depict some distinctive feature of the noun/pronoun. They are one of the eight basic parts of speech in English language. Adjectives aid in categorizing or quantifying words and make sentences more meaningful and complete when added at the right places with the right intent. These words can also be altered when used with a phrase, adverb or a clause. Adjectives are of different kinds, such as descriptive adjectives, predicate adjectives, limiting adjectives, superlative adjectives, possessive adjectives, demonstrative adjectives, indefinite adjectives and interrogative adjectives. Descriptive adjectives are the most widely used among all the categories of adjectives. The function of descriptive adjectives is to add detail or description to the noun. Descriptive adjectives can be divided into different categories such as adjectives of taste, shape, quantity, color, size, sound, etc. Read on for a more detailed view on the types of descriptive adjectives.

 

English, as a language, welcomes creativity whole-heartedly. This means that English speakers and writers have a wide array of descriptions to choose from, to describe a single noun. One can modify the present adjective and/or use a different adjective to convey the same meaning. Though it is not feasible to create a full-fledged list of descriptive adjectives, one can find people using many of these in their day to day English conversation. Once you learn the trick of applying descriptive adjectives to your nouns, you can make your sentence formation very precise, expressing your views in a crisp manner. There is a plethora of descriptive adjectives that you can use.

Descriptive objectives can be divided into three types of adjectives such as:

 

As the names conveys, simple adjectives are the basic types of descriptive objectives. They convey a trait or a quality. Various aspects, such as quantity, taste, sound, time, feelings, shape, color and material, can be expressed using simple descriptive adjectives. Some of the examples of simple descriptive adjectives are lazy, intelligent, red, green, tall, shy, big, soft, metallic, calm, happy, dark, fresh, circular, etc.

 

Compound adjectives are those descriptive adjectives that are formed by combining two words. These two words are usually linked with a hyphen. We all use one or the other type of compound adjectives while writing or speaking English. Some of such compound adjectives include words like short-tempered, well-being, self-centered, sure-footed, heavy-handed, three-headed, baby-faced, whole-hearted, life-saving, broken-heart, self-made, tight-fisted, freckle-faced, next-door, high-heeled, etc.

 

Proper adjectives are those adjectives which are derived from proper nouns. Nouns depicting regions, religions, countries are generally described by proper adjectives. As proper adjectives are derived from proper nouns, these are always capitalized. Examples of proper adjectives are Hindu, English, Greek, Buddhist, Christian, Roman Catholic, Italian, American, African, Spanish, Mexican, Australian, Chinese, Turkish, Nepalese, Burmese, Pacific, etc. 

 

Though anyone is free to use more than one descriptive adjective in a sentence, these should be used in a particular order to describe a noun. Adjectives that portray opinions normally precede adjectives that describe shape, size or color, etc. For instance, the sentence "See the beautiful yellow rose in the garden," is more desirable than "See the yellow beautiful rose in the garden". Also, adjectives are prioritised from the more general in scope to those that are more specific. For example, "The small Australian bird is sitting on the branch," is more desirable than "The Australian small bird is sitting on the branch," and "The black sticky charcoal is spread on the road," is better than saying or writing "The sticky black charcoal is spread on the road.”

 

Now, you must have got a detailed idea of what descriptive adjectives are and how these can be used to describe your nouns in a convincing manner. There are a wide range of descriptive adjectives available in English language that you can apply to express the state, quality, quantity, action, color, size, etc or any other aspects of nouns. You just need to learn which type of descriptive adjective should be used with which type of noun and how these adjectives should be arranged in a sentence. An understanding of adjectives will definitely make you a better writer as well as a better speaker of the English language!