What Is an Adjective?

Adjectives are describing words. They tell us more descriptive information about a noun, such as the word ‘red’ in ‘a red car.’

Adjectives may be attributive (placed before the noun) or predicative (coming after the noun).

Attributive	Predicative
The small house	The house is small
The cold room	The room is cold
The young woman	The woman is young

All of these adjectives (‘small,’ ‘cold’ and ‘young’) in their basic form are positive adjectives – that is to say, they have no endings, unlike ‘smaller,’ ‘colder,’ ‘youngest’ etc.

What is a comparative adjective?

However, adjectives can also be used to compare one thing to another.

Generally, we use the morpheme ‘-er’ to create a comparative adjective:

This house is colder than that house.

If the adjective already ends in ‘-e’ then we simply add ‘-r.’

This house is larger than that house.

If the adjective is one syllable and ends in a single vowel followed by a single consonant (except for ‘w’ or ‘y’) then we double the consonant:

This house is bigger than that house.

If the adjective is more than one syllable, then we don’t add an ending. Instead we use the word ‘more’:

This house is more expensive than that house.

What is a superlative adjective?

We can also use an adjective to describe a noun as having more of a specific quality than any other. This is a superlative adjective.

To do this, we add ‘-est’ to the adjective if the adjective is one syllable:

This is the biggest house on the street.

If the adjective is two syllables, we use the word ‘most’:

This is the most expensive house on the street.

The same rules about doubling consonants also apply to superlative adjectives.

Irregular comparative and superlatives

Some adjectives have irregular forms in the comparative and superlative.

The most common are:

good – better – best
bad – worse – worst
much – more – most
little – less – least
far – further – furthest