Adjective

An adjective is a word that describes or modifies a noun or pronoun, giving more information about its qualities, state, or identity. Adjectives are one of the core parts of speech in English, and you use them constantly — to describe people, objects, feelings, and ideas.

What adjectives do

Adjectives typically answer questions like What kind?, Which one?, or How many? They can appear in two main positions:

• Before a noun (called attributive position): a tall building, fresh coffee, three students
• After a linking verb (called predicative position): The soup is hot, She seems tired

Some adjectives work in only one position. For example, main is almost always attributive (the main reason), while asleep is almost always predicative (The baby is asleep).

Examples

• ✅ She wore a red dress. (red modifies dress)
• ✅ The exam was difficult. (difficult follows the linking verb was)
• ❌ She wore a redly dress. (Adverbs like redly don't modify nouns.)
• ✅ He gave me useful advice. (useful modifies the uncountable noun advice)

Adjective order

When you stack multiple adjectives before a noun, English follows a conventional order: opinion → size → age → shape → colour → origin → material → purpose. For example, a lovely small old round brown French wooden serving table — though in real life you'd rarely pile up that many.

Self-check: If your sentence sounds awkward with two adjectives before a noun, try swapping their order. The version that "sounds right" usually follows the standard sequence.

Adjectives vs. determiners

Words like the, this, my, and some were historically grouped with adjectives, but modern grammar classifies them as determiners. Unlike true adjectives, determiners don't have comparative forms (bigger works, but *more the doesn't) and occupy a fixed slot before any adjectives.

Comparatives and superlatives

Most adjectives have comparative and superlative forms used to compare things:

• tall → taller → tallest
• expensive → more expensive → most expensive

To practice these, try Comparatives and Superlatives. You can also build a foundation with Basics. Adjectives and Adverbs. and Basics. Word Order..

Comparative and Superlative

Some adjectives are comparable. For example, a person may be polite, but another person may be more polite, and a third person may be the most polite of the three.

The word more here modifies the adjective polite to indicate a comparison is being made, and most modifies the adjective to indicate an absolute comparison (a superlative).

In English, many adjectives can take the suffixes -er and -est (sometimes requiring additional letters before the suffix; see forms for far below) to indicate the comparative and superlative forms, respectively:

• great, greater, greatest
• *deep, deeper, *deepest*

Some adjectives are irregular in this sense:

• good, better, best
• bad, worse, worst
• many, more, most (sometimes regarded as an adverb or determiner)
• little, less, least

Some adjectives can have both regular and irregular variations:

• old, older, oldest
• far, farther, farthest

also

• old, elder, eldest
• far, further, furthest

Another way to convey comparison is by incorporating the words more and most. There is no simple rule to decide which means is correct for any given adjective, however.

The general tendency is for simpler adjectives, and those from Anglo-Saxon to take the suffixes, while longer adjectives and those from French, Latin, Greek do not—but sometimes sound of the word is the deciding factor.

Many adjectives do not naturally lend themselves to comparison. For example, some English speakers would argue that it does not make sense to say that one thing is more ultimate than another, or that something is most ultimate, since the word ultimate is already absolute in its semantics. Such adjectives are called non-comparable or absolute.

Nevertheless, native speakers will frequently play with the raised forms of adjectives of this sort.

Although pregnant is logically non-comparable (either one is pregnant or not), one may hear a sentence like She looks more and more pregnant each day. Likewise extinct and equal appear to be non-comparable, but one might say that a language about which nothing is known is more extinct than a well-documented language with surviving literature but no speakers, while George Orwell wrote All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

These cases may be viewed as evidence that the base forms of these adjectives are not as absolute in their semantics as is usually thought. Comparative and superlative forms are also occasionally used for other purposes than comparison.

In English comparatives can be used to suggest that a statement is only tentative or tendential: one might say John is more the shy-and-retiring type, where the comparative more is not really comparing him with other people or with other impressions of him, but rather, could be substituting for on the whole.

Modifier

In grammar, a modifier is an optional element in phrase structure or clause structure. A modifier is so called because it is said to modify (change the meaning of) another element in the structure, on which it is dependent. Typically the modifier can be removed without affecting the grammar of the sentence. For example, in the English sentence This is a red ball, the adjective red is a modifier, modifying the noun ball. Removal of the modifier would leave This is a ball, which is grammatically correct and equivalent in structure to the original sentence.

Other terms used with a similar meaning are qualifier (the word qualify may be used in the same way as modify in this context), attribute, and adjunct. These concepts are often distinguished from complements and arguments, which may also be considered dependent on another element, but are considered an indispensable part of the structure. For example, in His face became red, the word red might be called a complement or argument of became, rather than a modifier or adjunct, since it cannot be omitted from the sentence.

Types

The two principal types of modifiers are adjectives (and adjectival phrases and adjectival clauses), which modify nouns; and adverbs (and adverbial phrases and adverbial clauses), which modify other parts of speech, particularly verbs, adjectives and other adverbs, as well as whole phrases or clauses. (Not all adjectives and adverbs are necessarily modifiers, however; an adjective will normally be considered a modifier when used attributively, but not when used predicatively – compare the examples with the adjective red at the start of this article.)

Another type of modifier in some languages, including English, is the noun adjunct, which is a noun modifying another noun (or occasionally another part of speech).

An example is land in the phrase land mines given above. Examples of the above types of modifiers, in English, are given below.

• It was [a nice house]. (adjective modifying a noun, in a noun phrase)
• [The swiftly flowing waters] carried it away. (adjectival phrase, in this case a participial phrase, modifying a noun in a noun phrase)
• She's [the woman with the hat]. (adjectival phrase, in this case a prepositional phrase, modifying a noun in a noun phrase)
• I saw [the man whom we met yesterday]. (adjectival clause, in this case a relative clause, modifying a noun in a noun phrase)
• His desk was in [the faculty office]. (noun adjunct modifying a noun in a noun phrase)
• [Put it gently in the drawer]. (adverb in verb phrase)
• He was [very gentle]. (adverb in adjective phrase)
• She set it down [very gently]. (adverb in adverb phrase)
• [Even more] people were there. (adverb modifying a determiner)
• It ran [right up the tree]. (adverb modifying a prepositional phrase)
• [Only the dog] was saved. (adverb modifying a noun phrase)In some cases, noun phrases or quantifiers can act as modifiers:
• [A few more] workers are needed. (quantifier modifying a determiner)
• She's [two inches taller than her sister]. (noun phrase modifying an adjective)

Ambiguous and Dangling Modifiers

Sometimes it is not clear which element of the sentence a modifier is intended to modify. In many cases this is not important, but in some cases it can lead to genuine ambiguity. For example: *He painted her sitting on the step. Here the participial phrase sitting on the step may be intended to modify her (meaning that the painting's subject was sitting on the step), or it may be intended to modify the verb phrase painted her or the whole clause *he painted her* (or just he), meaning in effect that it was the painter who was sitting on the step.

Sometimes the element which the modifier is intended to modify does not in fact appear in the sentence, or is not in an appropriate position to be associated with that modifier. This is often considered a grammatical or stylistic error. For example: Walking along the road, a vulture loomed overhead. Here whoever was "walking along the road" is not mentioned in the sentence, so the modifier (walking along the road) has nothing to modify, except a vulture, which is clearly not the intention. Such a case is called a "dangling modifier", or more specifically, in the common case where (as here) the modifier is a participial phrase, a "dangling participle".

A1 | Elementary | Beginners

CEFR A1 is the first level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), a widely used standard for measuring language ability. If you're just starting to learn English — or rebuilding from scratch — this is where you begin.

What can an A1 learner do?

At A1, you can handle the most basic, everyday communication. Specifically, you're expected to:

• Understand and use familiar everyday expressions — greetings, simple questions, common signs and instructions.
• Introduce yourself and others — say where you live, talk about people you know, describe things you have.
• Ask and answer simple personal questions — "What's your name?", "Where are you from?", "Do you have a car?"
• Have short conversations — as long as the other person speaks slowly and clearly and is willing to help.

What grammar does A1 cover?

A1 focuses on the building blocks of English grammar. You'll work with:

• Basic verb forms — the present tense of be, have, and do, plus simple regular and irregular verbs
• Simple sentence structure — subject + verb + object word order
• Common determiners and pronouns — a, the, this, my, he, she, it
• Basic prepositions — in, on, at, to, from
• Simple questions — yes/no questions and wh- questions (what, where, who)
• Everyday vocabulary and collocations — phrases that naturally go together, like make breakfast or do homework

How do you know if you're A1?

If you can read a short text like a menu or a bus sign, fill out a simple form with your personal details, and ask someone basic questions in English — you're operating at A1. If most of that still feels challenging, you're in exactly the right place.

Self-check: Try introducing yourself in five sentences — your name, where you're from, what you do, something you like, and one question for the other person. If you can do that (even with mistakes), you're solidly at A1.

What's next?

Once you're comfortable with A1 basics, you'll move toward A2, where sentences get longer, tenses expand, and you start handling more real-world situations.

To start practising, try these challenges: Are you A1/Beginner? Test your English CEFR Level!, "To be" in Present Tense, and Basics. Word Order..

Difficulty: Easy

Easy difficulty. Difficulty levels represent author's opinion about how hard a question or challenge is.