Adjective

An adjective is one of the most important parts of a sentence. This part of speech is actually very common and is used automatically. It describes, identifies or qualifies a noun or a pronoun. In short, an adjective adds colour to modify a noun or pronoun to make it more specific and vivid. Since adjectives are used to identify, qualify or quantify individual people and unique things, they are usually positioned before the noun or pronoun that they modify. Some sentences contain multiple adjectives.

To exemplify an adjective, we take the opportunity to quote a special sentence that uses all the letters of the English language - “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” In the sentence, the words ‘quick,’ ‘brown’ and ‘lazy’ are adjectives and they are modifying or describing the relative nouns fox and dog.

However, not all the adjectives are the same, and like other parts of speech, there are different types of adjectives.

Qualitative adjective or Descriptive adjectives - Descriptive adjectives are perhaps the most common ones. They simply say something about the quality or the kind of the noun or pronoun they’re referring to. Example – ‘Swati is a smart girl’.

Quantitative adjectives or Numeric adjective – As the name suggests, this type of adjectives indicates the amount or estimated amount of the noun or pronoun in the sentence. In other words, an adjective which shows the quantity of nouns or pronouns is called as Adjective of Quantity However; they do not provide definite information about the exact numbers. It indicates ‘how much’ noun is there in the sentence. For example – Pradip has enough money in his account.. Among others, any, enough, small, little, substantial, some are examples of adjectives of quantity.

Possessive adjectives - Possessive adjectives are used to indicate possession. They also function as possessive pronouns. Few examples of possessive adjectives are – my, your, his, her, its.et al.

Demonstrative adjectives – The adjectives, that are used to indicate or demonstrate specific people, animals, or things, are called Demonstrative adjectives. These, those, this and that are demonstrative adjectives.

Interrogative adjectives - interrogative adjectives are used to form questions and are similar to interrogative pronouns. These adjectives are always followed by a noun or a pronoun,  Which, what, whose are interrogative adjectives.

Indefinite adjectives - An indefinite adjective is a type of adjective that is modifies nouns in a non-specific manner. They are termed as indefinite, as they modify nouns a non-specific or vague manner. Among others, some of the indefinite adjectives are – another, any, each, either, neither, other, many and much.