Adjective – Definition & Types

Adjective: An adjective describes or modifies noun/s and pronoun/s in a sentence. It normally indicates quality, size, shape, duration, feelings, contents, and more about a noun or pronoun.

Example:

• That place is not good. (What kind?)
• I have 50 apples in the fridge. (How many?)

Types of Adjectives

• Descriptive Adjectives
• Quantitative Adjectives
• Proper Adjectives
• Demonstrative Adjectives
• Possessive Adjectives
• Interrogative Adjectives
• Indefinite Adjectives
• Articles
• Compound Adjectives

Descriptive adjective: is a word which describes nouns and pronouns. Most of the adjectives belong in this type. These adjectives provide information and attribute to the nouns/pronouns they modify or describe. Descriptive adjectives are also called qualitative adjectives.

Examples:

• I have a beautiful dress. (The word ‘beautiful’ is describing an attribute of the dress)
• He is hungry. (The word ‘hungry’ is providing information about the subject)\

Quantitative adjective: provides information about the quantity of the nouns/pronouns. This type belongs to the question category of ‘how much’ and ‘how many’.

Examples:

• I have 60 Balloons. (How much)
• They have 6 Branches. (How many)

Proper adjectives: are the adjective form of proper nouns. When proper nouns modify or describe other nouns/pronouns, they become proper adjectives. ‘Proper’ means ‘specific’ rather than ‘formal’ or ‘polite.’

Example:

• Indian phones are strong.
• Indian people are hard workers.

Demonstrative adjective: directly refers to something or someone. Demonstrative adjectives include the words: this, that, these, those. A demonstrative pronoun works alone and does not precede a noun, but a demonstrative adjective always comes before the word it modifies.

Examples:

• That function hall is so gorgeously decorated. (‘That’ refers to a singular noun far from the speaker)
• This phone is mine. (‘This’ refers to a singular noun close to the speaker)

Possessive adjective: indicates possession or ownership. It suggests the belongingness of something to someone/something. Some of the most used possessive adjectives are my, his, her, our, their, your.

Examples:

• My dress has sparkling stars.
• His video game is best.

Interrogative adjective: asks a question. An interrogative adjective must be followed by a noun or a pronoun. The interrogative adjectives are: which, what, whose. These words will not be considered as adjectives if a noun does not follow right after them. ‘Whose’ also belongs to the possessive adjective type.

Examples:

• Which car do you use?
• What is your favourite player?

Indefinite adjective: describes or modifies a noun unspecifically. They provide indefinite/unspecific information about the noun. The common indefinite adjectives are few, many, much, most, all, any, each, every, either, nobody, several, some, etc.

Examples:

• I gave some chocolates to him.
• I want a few days to start again.

Articles: also modify the nouns. So, articles are also adjectives. Articles determine the specification of nouns. ‘A’ and ‘an’ are used to refer to an unspecific noun, and ‘the’ is used to refer to a specific noun.

Examples:

• An Animal is always afraid of man.
• The cat is afraid of me.
• A good teacher explains.

Compound Adjectives: When compound nouns/combined words modify other nouns, they become a compound adjective. This type of adjective usually combines more than one word into a single lexical unit and modifies a noun. They are often separated by a hyphen or joined together by a quotation mark.

Example:

• I have a broken-down chair.
• I have a seven-foot-long table.