Word building nouns to adjectives or adjectives to nouns

The most common suffix changes to form nouns:

1. Add –ness to form nouns from adjectives. ...

2. Add –ity to form nouns from adjectives. ...

3. Add –ance or –ence to form nouns from

adjectives or verbs. ...

4. Add –ment to form nouns from adjectives or verbs. ...

5. Add –tion or –sion to form nouns from verbs.

Noun Adjective

Anger Angry

Beauty Beautiful

Craziness Crazy

Danger Dangerous

Ease Easy

Familiarity Familiar

Guilt Guilty

Happiness Happy

Intelligence Intelligent

Juice Juicy

Kindness Kind

Luck Lucky
Misery Miserable

Nature Natural

Offence Offensive

A suffix is a letter or a group of letters added to the end of a word. Using a suffix lets us make
new words.

for example: sad + ness = sadness

The suffix ness is used to change many adjectives (describing words) into

nouns (naming words). for example: thick + ness = thickness The book Kate was reading was
very thick. (adjective)

Do you know the thickness of this piece of wood? (noun)

If the adjective ends in 'y ' then it needs to be changed to 'i ' before ness is added.

happy + ness = happiness

The suffix ity can also be used to change adjectives into nouns.

for example: similar + ity = similarity

The twins were very similar . (adjective)

The teacher thought that Paul had copied Jack because there was a great similarity between their
answers. (noun) If an adjective ends in 'e ' then the ' e ' needs to be dropped before ity is added.

pure + ity = purity

Noun adjectives
Pain Painful

Question Questionable

Romance Romantic
Strength Strong

Truth True

Ugliness Ugly

Violence Violent

Warmth Warm

Youth Young

Zeal Zealous