Adjective

Adjectives are one of the four major word classes, along with nouns, verbs and adverbs.

Examples of adjectives are: big, small, blue, old, rich and nice. They give us more information about people, animals or things represented by nouns and pronouns:

For example:

That’s a big house.

Look at the grey horse.

Some dogs have long tails.

She is tall.

Meanings of adjectives

Adjectives give us more information. They modify or describe features and qualities of people, animals and things.

Here are some of the common meanings.

Oppositeness

Most common adjectives are members of a pair of opposites (antonyms):

Gradable and ungradable

Many pairs of opposites are gradable, i.e. they have different degrees of the same feature:

Small:

This suitcase is extremely small.

This suitcase is very small.

This suitcase is quite small.

Hot:

It was reasonably hot in Italy this summer.

It was quite hot in Italy this summer.

It was pretty hot in Italy this summer.

It was very hot in Italy this summer.

It was extremely hot in Italy this summer.