• What are adjectives?
• Adjective types
• Adjectives examples
• Sentences with adjectives
• Degrees of the adjective

We explain what an adjective is, its function, degrees and examples in sentences. Also, the characteristics of each type of adjective.

An adjective adds information about the noun: apple red.

What are adjectives?

Adjectives make up a grammatical category or class of words that express some of the properties or characteristics of the noun accompanying. Its name comes from the Latin voice adiectivus, “That is added”, and they are generally found within a noun phrase.

Syntactically, adjectives precede or succeed the noun they qualify, that is, as direct, immediate modifiers. Therefore, they usually coincide in gender and number with the noun, and consequently present the same suffixes inflectional-a, -o, -as, -os, -es), although there are adjectives whose ending only allows an accident of gender or number.

On the other hand, many adjectives have a special condition called apocope, which occurs when they are in certain positions with respect to the noun, in which they lose part of their content. This is what happens in the case of "good man" and "good man", for example.

Adjective types

Adjectives are classified as follows:

• Adjectives. These are those adjectives that attribute specific characteristics to the noun, that is, that explain how it is or detail some of its properties. They have in themselves a recognizable semantic value, which can often be expressed in degrees, and can be classified in turn into:
  • Explanatory adjectives. That express abstract or concrete qualities inherent to the noun. They often serve to emphasize this property, especially in poetic language. For example: "red blood".
  • Specific adjectives. That add to the noun a quality that serves to distinguish it from the rest of the objects of the same type. For example: "dog small”.
• Relational adjectives. Those who establish a link between the noun and its context of belonging, so they respond to the idea of ​​"belonging to". For example: "organism police", "consulting room doctor”.
• Determining adjectives. Normally known as determiners, to dry, these adjectives fulfill a grammatical role, delimiting within the prayer the entities referred to, without adding essential meanings to the noun. In turn, they can be of the following types:
  • Demonstrative adjectives. That indicate the proximity of the referent with respect to the speaker, or the other participants in the speech. For example: "those shoes are branded ","that Her name is Marisela ”.
  • Possessive adjectives. That in a similar way denotes a relationship of belonging with respect to the speaker. For example: "this notebook is of yours"," All money is yours”.
  • Numeral adjectives. Which introduce the notion of number, that is, of quantity, with respect to the object described. For example: “I would eat thousand cakes", "two pounds of flour, please. "
  • Exclamatory and interrogative adjectives. Which denote the expressive or interrogative intention of the speaker regarding the referred object, whether or not they go within a question (?) Or exclamation (!). For example: "How many money did you bring? ","How much you're right! ”.

Adjectives examples

Relational adjectives indicate belonging to a field, such as "school".

Here is a short list of examples of adjectives of each type:

• Adjectives. Sweet, salty, stubborn, meek, fierce, proud, uptight, smooth, striated, common, strange, bizarre, grotesque, happy, sad, dead, alive, flooded, rude, dry, high, low, slow, fast, dizzying, heavy, round, rotund, drooping, honest, loose, violent, spectacular, harmonious, ribbed, submissive, anecdotal, peasant, supreme, rough, abstract, concrete, caustic.
• Relational adjectives. Dental, police, medical, technological, linguistic, zoo, chemical, physical, school, relational, satellite, astronomical, lunar, solar, musical, referential, legal, onomatopoeic, literary, rhetorical, prosopopoeic, playful, German, Swedish, Venezuelan, American, European, Asian, African, Planetary, Organizational, Business, Government.
• Determining adjectives. This, that, those, that, those, his, yours, mine, his, two, four, seven hundred, a thousand, how many, which.

Sentences with adjectives

And then some sentences with adjectives:

• This lasagna is delicious.
• Thousands of people flocked to the government headquarters.
• In my dreams you never look so beautiful.
• These oranges are very sweet and fresh.
• A brunette woman came in with dirty shoes that morning.
• Many police officers are corrupt in this country.
• The new book cost me nine hundred pesos.
• Black nights await me without your love.
• How many tickets will you buy? So many!
• Tell me how many hours it took you to get there.
• What are your favorite landscapes?

Degrees of the adjective

Comparative grade adjectives signal a comparison, such as "higher."

The qualities expressed by most of the qualifying adjectives are susceptible to gradation, that is, they can be expressed in different degrees, depending on their quality. Thus, we can differentiate between:

• Positive grade. When the adjective simply expresses a condition in a neutral degree. For example: "tall man", "beautiful woman", "boring book".
• Comparative grade. When the adjective introduces a comparison between one degree and another, or between one object and another, based on the same quality. Unlike other languages, Spanish requires for its comparisons the use of adverbs such as “más” or “menos”, and of pronouns such as “que” and “como”. For example: “a man taller than another”, “a woman less beautiful than her sister”, “a book as boring as another”.
• Superlative level. When the adjective expresses the maximum degree of the condition, that is, the highest or most intense possible. In such cases, the suffix -very or - staunch, or the help of particles like "very" or, colloquially, "too much". For example: "a very tall man", "a very beautiful woman", "a very boring book".