An adjective is a word that helps better describe an object, animal or person.
Adjectives are descriptive words to add characteristics to nouns to add more specific information for the reader.
For example, when describing a boy in your class you can say,
That boy in my class who sits on the back bench.
Or, you can say,
That boy with brown hair in my class who sits on the back bench.
With the use of an adjective, the second sentence helped better describe which boy you are talking about.
Did you identify the adjective in the sentence?
That’s right it was “brown“. The adjective, brown, described the colour of the hair and this is why we put it in a group of adjectives that describe the appearance.
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Why do we use adjectives?
Adjectives are used to add specific information in our sentences to help the reader have a better understanding of the sentence. We can add adjectives to clarify opinion, add factual information, describe the purpose, add character traits, add more detail or relative information.
Let’s take a look at some examples,
The woman at the party was wearing a beautiful red dress.
The factual information in the sentence is that the dress was red but we added our own opinion by saying a “beautiful” red dress. It’s our opinion that the dress was beautiful and the factual information is that the dress was red.
The palace had a huge entrance to the dining room and lying on the side was the dining table.
By adding the word huge we help the reader visualise the entrance relative to the normal entrances and by adding the word dinning we describe the purpose of the table.
The patient cleaner took hours to clean the old toys from the shiny floor.
The word patient helps us describe a trait of the cleaner which helps the reader visualise the type of person the cleaner is. The words old and shiny help add additional detail for the type of toys and the floor.
Adjectives can be positive or negative
In the above example, we described the cleaner as a patient cleaner which is a positive trait but if we add the word impatient then we will describe a negative trait.
In the cleaner example, we also said old toys which is a negative adjective instead we could add new which is a positive adjective.
The lively discussions at the dining table were interesting.
This sentence is full of positivity thanks to the words lively and interesting.
The discussions at the dining table were boring and the whole room was just full of noise.
This sentence on the other hand describes the negative.
