Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Adjectives give us more information about people, places, animals and things. We
can often create adjectives from nouns, verbs and even other adjectives by adding
a prefix or a suffix.
Construction
We can use suffixes to change nouns and verbs into adjectives, or to change the
meaning of an adjective. Some suffixes have a general meaning whilst others
simply transform words into adjectives.
The suffix -less usually means without something whilst the suffix -ful usually
means to have something.
(with hope) hopeful hope hopeless (without hope)
The suffix -ish changes nouns and adjectives into adjectives that mean like
something.
Dont be childish. (like a child)
The jacket is a bluish colour. (like blue)
For materials we can add -en to nouns to create adjectives that mean made
of.
A wooden chair.
A woolen jumper.
For words that have a short stressed vowel before the final consonant, we
double the final consonant.
sun sunny
We drop an e from the end of word when the suffix begins with a vowel
(but: ee, oe, ye remain unchanged).
fortune fortunate
agree agreeable
We drop the final l before adding the suffix -ful to words that end in ll.
skill skilful
There are many more suffixes that we can use to create adjectives. The tables
below provide an overview of adjective formation using verbs and nouns.
Unfortunately, there are no rules to follow but we can always use a dictionary.
-al brute brutal He lifted the car off the ground with brutal strength.
-less home homeless If I dont find a new flat soon, Ill be homeless.
-ous fame famous Who is the most famous person in the world?
-able read readable The teachers handwriting was not very readable.
-ing or -ed?
Many adjectives for feelings end in both -ing and -ed.
We use adjectives that end in -ing are to describe the effect of people, things
or situations.
My mother is so embarrassing.
When we want describe how a person feels, we use adjectives that end in -
ed.
Erica is bored with her job.
Michael is confused by grammar.
Opposite Adjectives
dis-, in- and un-
Most adjectives in English have an opposite adjective: big/small, hot/cold,
tall/short, good/bad etc. However, we can also use prefixes to form the opposites
of many adjectives. The most common prefix for forming opposite adjectives
are un-, dis-, and in-. Some examples are listed in the table below.
prefix adjective opposite adjective example
opposite
prefix adjective example
adjective
ir-
Its irresponsible to drive if you have been
responsible irresponsible
drinking.