List of Descriptive Adjectives

From LoveToKnow Home School

A list of descriptive adjectives is useful in the homeschool classroom for several reasons. It can be posted as a list to help students learn new vocabulary words, to give students ideas for their writing assignments and to help students learn about English syntax.

How many descriptive adjectives can you use for this photo?

Adjectives

Adjectives are modifiers. They modify a noun or pronoun by quantifying, describing or identifying words. There can be more than one adjective describing a noun or pronoun. There are two types of adjectives: descriptive adjectives and limiting adjectives.

Descriptive Adjectives

Descriptive adjectives are the largest group of adjectives. The following are a few examples of how you can use the list of descriptive adjectives in writing sentences:

The haunted house scared the children.
A black cat ran across the lawn.
The loud engine of the red car startled everyone.
The basement had a dank and musty odor.
The small box was full of blue marbles.

Simple Adjectives

Simple descriptive adjectives are words that are commonly used to describe a noun or pronoun, such as:

big
little
happy
sad

Compound Adjectives

Compound adjectives are two words used consecutively to describe a noun or pronoun. They are hyphenated to help the reader avoid confusion. Examples of compound adjectives are:

middle-aged
wide-eyed
teeny-tiny
old-fashioned

Opinion Adjectives

If more than one descriptive adjective is being used, the opinion adjective should be placed first, followed by the descriptive adjective. For example:

The beautiful, blue sky.

The word beautiful is an opinion adjective because it may vary from person to person.