We learned that adjectives are the words that describe or modify nouns or pronouns. For example:
- Incessant anxiety has undermined his health.
In this sentence, “incessant” is the adjective that describes the noun “anxiety”. What kind of “anxiety” are we talking about? We are talking about the anxiety that never stopped. So anxiety has been modified by “incessant”.
Now apart from just words, even phrases and clauses can act as adjectives. For example:
- We will have to order six vegetable and cheese sandwiches and two slices of broccoli chicken pizza for the guests tonight.
This sentence talks about a few food items. While the adjectives “six” and “two” present the number of edibles required for the guests, “vegetable and cheese” and “broccoli chicken” refer to their kind. Notice that both the adjectives are phrases.
- The monkeys with black face and long tail are still a menace in some parts of Delhi.
In this sentence, the prepositional phrase “with black face and long tail” describes the noun entity the “monkeys”. It describes what kind of monkey is a menace. Hence, this prepositional phrase acts as an adjective in this sentence.
- Nick wants the umbrella that has the Spiderman print on it.
This sentence says that Nick wants a specific kind of umbrella and this kind has been explained by using the clause “that has Spiderman print on it”. So in this sentence this entire clause acts as an adjective and describes the umbrella.
So as you saw in the above three example sentences, adjectives provide some more information about the entity that they describe and adjectives can be a single word or a group of words or a clause.
Adjectives can also be used to make comparisons. When we make comparisons, we need to use adjectives in their comparative or superlative forms. Read this post to learn more about Usage of Comparative and Superlative Adjectives
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