- The main body of this document is from Grammar for English teachers

- when I use green, it refers to statements from Grammar for English teachers with which I
don’t entirely agree.
- I used brown when adding something from English grammar in use

Adjectives

- Adjectives are often related to nouns:

o With suffixes: - able, - al, - ate, - an, - ant, - ent, - ful, -ist, - ive, -less, - ory, -ous, -
some, -wise - streetwise, -y
o We can attach prefixes ‘non-’, ‘pro-’, ‘anti-’ or suffixes ‘-like’, ‘-friendly’: pro-
democracy movement, a business-like manner
- Participle forms
o Boring – present participle
o Bored – past participle
- Place
o Before the noun
o After a noun/ pronoun and verb (‘predicatively’)
- Order
o rule of thumb:
 general before specific
 opinion before description
o order: opinion/size/shape/colour/origin/material/use noun
- adverbs
o we use adverbs of manner to narrow down the meaning of the adjective, making it
more precise – a rapidly degenerating condition

Gradable adjectives

Ungradable adjectives – they express: extreme qualities (terrified, furious); absolute qualities (alive,
correct, dead). With these we can use only intensifiers which stress the extreme or absolute nature
of these adjectives, and we don’t use downtoners (He’s utterly terrified.)