Adjectives

The words that describe a noun or add something to the meaning of a noun or a pronoun.
Adjectives can be placed before a noun or a pronoun, after a linking verb.
 Black horse is running.
 All cars have four tyres.
 Please give me this bag.
In these sentences, the words written in bold tell us something about the noun. So, these are called Adjectives.

Types of Adjectives
1. Adjective of Quality
2. Adjective of Quantity
3. Adjective of Number
4. Demonstrative Adjectives
5. Interrogative Adjectives
6. Possessive Adjectives

1. Adjectives of Quality: The words that describe what kind of a noun it is are called Adjectives of Quality.
For example: honest, brave, beautiful, sweet
 Harish is an honest boy.
 Radha is a beautiful girl.
 This is a sweet mango.

2. Adjectives of Quantity: The words that describe how much of a thing is intended are called Adjectives of
Quantity. For example: much, some, any, whole, little etc.
 I have much pain in my hand.
 I want some money.
 The whole class has gone for picnic.

3. Adjectives of Number: The words that describe how many person or things are there, or in what order do
they come are called Adjectives of Number. For example: one, two, first, second, all, many
 I have two flats in Mumbai.
 This is my first trip to Singapore.
 All girls love shopping.
 I want each student to pass the test.

Adjectives of Numbers can be further sub-divided into 3 Categories:

a) Cardinals / Ordinals: Cardinal shows the number of person or things, while Ordinals shows in what
order do they appear in a series.
a. Cardinal: One, Two, Three, Four etc.
b. Ordinal: First, Second, Third, Fourth etc.

b) Indefinite Numeral Adjective: The adjectives, which do not refer to any exact number, but indicate
some general thing. For example: all, many, some etc.

c) Distributive Numeral Adjectives: The adjectives which refer to each one of a number. For example:
each, every, either, neither etc.

4. Demonstrative Adjectives: The words that describe the person or thing, about which we are talking are
called Demonstrative Adjectives.
 This is my house.
 That is your car.
 These flowers are beautiful.
 Those boys are disturbing us.
 5. Interrogative Adjectives: The adjectives, which are used for asking questions are called Interrogative
Adjectives. For example: what, which, whose etc.
 What colour is your car?
 Which way is the temple?
 Whose father is doctor?

6. Possessive Adjectives: The words, used to show possession or belonging of an object with the subject are
called Possessive Adjectives. The answer the question, ‘whose’? For example: my, your, his, her etc.
 My brother is a doctor.
 Your house is very big.
 His car was stolen yesterday.

Degrees of Comparison
Look at the 3 sentences below.
1. Ram is fat.
2. Mohan is fatter than Ram.
3. Ganesh is the fattest of the three.

In the above sentences, the words ‘fat’, ‘fatter’ and ‘fattest’ have been used as adjectives. All the three are different
forms of the same adjective ‘fat’.

 In the first sentence, the only person is Ram. We are not comparing Ram with anyone. So, we are just saying
that “Ram is fat”.
 In the second sentence, we are comparing two people – Ram and Mohan. As we can easily make out, Mohan
is more fat that Ram. So, we are saying that “Mohan is fatter than Ram”.
 In the third sentence, now, we are comparing more than 2 people (here 3 people). As we can easily see that
Ganesh is more fat than Ram and even Mohan. So, we can say – “Ganesh is the fattest of the three”

There are 3 Degrees of Comparison

Positive Degree – This degree is used when we simply describe the quality of a noun. Here, we have only one
object of that kind and we are not comparing that noun with any other noun.

Comparative Degree – This degree is used when we have two objects having the same quality, and we want to
compare that quality of these two objects.

Superlative Degree – This degree is used when we have minimum of 3 objects having the same quality and we
want to compare all the objects.