Verbal Ability - Adjectives

Introduction

An adjective is a word which describes or modifies a noun or a pronoun. For example, in the sentence, “Sita has bought a red, five-seater car”, the words “red, five-seater” are adjectives as they describe the noun, “car”.

Important Tips

Adjectives needn’t always come before a noun, as in “He is a nice boy”; adjectives may not sometimes need nouns. For example, in the sentence, “He is good”, the adjective “good” doesn’t come before any noun, yet it describes the noun “boy”.

Some more example of adjectives not being used before nouns

• He is intelligent.
• I feel happy.
• She seems unhappy.
• They look fantastic.

Comparatives and Superlatives

Adjectives are not only used in describing nouns, but also used in comparing them. When adjectives are used for comparing people, we call them comparatives and superlatives

Comparatives

The comparative form of adjectives is used when we are comparing one noun with the other samples of the same noun.

For Example

• Rahul is more intelligent than Saurav. (Rahul compared with Saurav)

• Saurav is faster than Rahul. (Saurav compared with Rahul)

• Rahul and Saurav are fitter than the rest of boys in the team. (Both Rahul and Saurav compared with the rest of the team)

Superlatives

We use superlatives when we compare a noun with similar nouns on the basis of quality. For example - height, wealth, talent, fitness, etc. We find that one of them has the highest level of a quality.

For Example

• Rajesh is a strong boy.
• Suresh is stronger than Rajesh.
• Ramesh is stronger than both Rajesh and Suresh.
• Ramesh is the strongest of all three boys.

Comparative forms are given to an adjective by using “more” before the adjective.(More talented, more senior, more honest). However, in many cases, the adjectives are not used with “more”, but a different form ending with “-er”.

• He is more hungry than me. (Wrong)
• He is hungrier than me. (Correct)

• He is more tall than me. (Wrong)
• He is taller than me. (Correct)

Adjectives and the Comparison Table

There are many hundreds of adjectives that are used in daily life so it’s not possible to list them all in one place, unless the entire book is dedicated to discuss the adjectives.

The following tables have a list of adjectives that are the most-commonly used the examinations and comprehensions. In addition to that, there is also the technique mentioned on how to convert the adjective to comparative and superlative degrees −

Possessive Adjectives

Possessive adjectives describe the ownership of the noun. They describe if something/someone mentioned in the sentence belongs or is related to the noun. Examples include- my, your, his, her, its, our, your, their.

For Example

I’ll get my bag.

Is this your luggage?

Possessive adjectives are often confused with possessive pronouns.

Examples −

Your bike is blue. (“your” is an adjective which modifies bike)

Mine is yellow. (“Mine” is a pronoun which functions as the subject of the verb is)

Examples

Difference between Adjectives and Adverbs

Adjectives are words that describe the nouns, but adverbs describe the action. These two are very commonly misused in place of each other. Let us discuss the following example −

For Example

Rajat is a good chef as he cooks tasty dishes and also manages everything perfectly.

In this example, the words “good” and “tasty” describe the nouns “chef” and “dishes” respectively, hence they are adjectives.

On the other hand, the word “manages” is an action and “perfectly” is used to describe how Rajat manages everything, hence it is an adverb.

We will discuss more in detail on adverbs in later chapters.