What Are Adjectives? 7 Types of Adjectives

Adjectives are words or phrases that modify nouns and pronouns. 

Adjectives add vividness to writing by describing, defining, or qualifying persons, places, or things. They add more to a story or article by providing descriptive information and details. 

Get insight into how to include different types of adjectives in your writing.

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Why Are Adjectives Used in Writing?

Adjectives add context, detail, and definition. 

Consider the difference between these two sentences:

• No Adjectives: The woman had bricks in a car. 
• Adjectives Included: The blonde-haired woman had eight solid-gold, 24-karat bricks in her bright-red car. 

Both sentences have a woman in a car with bricks. However, the adjectives in the second version paint an entirely different picture! They bring the story to life. 

7 Types of Adjectives

As illustrated in the example above, by modifying other words, adjectives add layers of meaning to the words they describe. They help to paint a story. 

1. Qualitative or descriptive adjectives

Descriptive adjectives, also called qualitative adjectives, are the type most people are familiar with, and for good reason—most adjectives fall into this category. 

They describe the characteristics or attributes of a person, place, or thing.

In addition to physical appearance or personality attributes, qualitative adjectives can express other descriptive qualities, such as opinion, size, and age. They answer the question: “What kind?”

Examples: 

• The shiny, chrome espresso machine makes delicious coffee. 
• She feels too tired to go to the early-morning yoga class.
• She is a kind-hearted and generous person.
• That is an enormous and heavy old dresser.

2. Quantitative adjectives

Quantitative adjectives reveal how many or how much of something is being described. 

Quantitative adjectives may be numbers or number-related words (both, more, dozen, whole, half, etc.). They answer the questions: “How many?” or “How much?”

Examples: 

• She needed two shopping carts for the twenty cases of water she bought.
• I baked two cakes and ate them both!
• Please put half of those towels upstairs.

3. Possessive adjectives

Possessive adjectives show ownership or association. They answer the question: “Whose?”

Examples:

• Pardon me, those are my cupcakes in your hands. 
• Their house is bigger than our house.

4. Proper adjectives

When a proper noun is the root of an adjective or is being used as an adjective, it is capitalized. 

A common instance of a proper adjective is when describing a country of origin or using a person’s name as part of a modifier.

Examples:

• The Italian sports car is faster than many other vehicles.
• That was just a Freudian slip on my part.
• She loves Norwegian furniture. 

5. Comparative and superlative adjectives

Sometimes, the job of an adjective is to describe the differences between two or more things.

• Comparative adjectives: Compare two things. They are usually preceded by ‘more’ or by adjectives ending in ‘-er.’
• Superlative adjectives: Compare three or more things. They are usually preceded by ‘most’ or by adjectives ending in ‘-est.’

Examples:

• She is smarter, but he is a more well-rounded student.
• She is the smartest, but he is the most well-rounded student. 
• Light the other, more fragrant candle. 
• The most fragrant candle should go by the door.

6. Demonstrative adjectives

There are four demonstrative adjectives: two are singular (this, that), and two are plural (these, those). 

These words are called demonstrative adjectives because they describe (demonstrate) whether something is near or far—in space or time. 

• This and These: Indicate relative closeness.
  • This is my house. 
  • These are my shoes.
  • This Saturday, I am out of town.
  • Days like these make me happy.
• That and Those: Indicate something is relatively far away.
  • That is my house.
  • Those are my shoes.
  • That Saturday, I am out of town.
  • Days like those make me happy. 

7. Interrogative Adjectives

There are just three interrogative adjectives: what, which, and whose. They are adjectives because they modify a noun by way of asking a question. 

Each of the interrogative adjectives leads to a response with a demonstrative and/or possessive adjective.

Examples:

• What recipe are you using? (I am using that recipe.)
• Whose shoes are those on the stairs? (Those are mine. Sorry.)
• Which of those shoes are yours? (The shoes on the left are mine.)

The Placement of Adjectives in a Sentence

Most adjectives come before the nouns they modify.

• The fast red car drove down the street. 
• Two vanilla cupcakes sat on the counter.

But some adjectives come after the nouns, especially when a form of the verb ‘to be’ is involved.

• The car is fast and red. 
• The cupcakes are vanilla and delicious. 

Adjectives can also appear after the words they modify if sensory verbs (seem, taste, look, feel, etc.) are involved:

• The car seems fast.
• The cupcakes taste delicious. 

Articles are Adjectives, Too

It may surprise you, but articles (a, an, and the) can also be adjectives. 

They have a part in modifying persons, places, and things because they indicate whether something is general or specific. 

‘A’ and ‘an’ indicate the generality and non-specificity of something or someone, while ‘the’ expresses the idea of something or someone specific. 

Examples: 

• I’ll have a cupcake now. 
• I’ll have the cupcake now.
• I want to talk to an attorney.
• I want to talk to the attorney. 

Adjectives Make Writing Come Alive

Once you start seeing how critical adjectives are to revealing details to a reader, it’s difficult to imagine writing without them. Incorporating adjectives is like painting a colorful, vibrant canvas that brings writing to life. 

Check if your adjective use is correct with the Originality.ai Grammar Checker. 

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