THE TYPES OF DESCRIPTIVE ADJECTIVES

THE DESCRIPTIVE ADJECTIVE LIST

A list of descriptive adjectives can be organized into three categories to help writers and speakers better manage this large class of words.

1: Simple Adjectives

Simple adjectives, as their name suggests, are the most basic kind of descriptive adjectives. They function to express quality.

Aspects such as feelings, time, sound, quantity, taste, appearance, size, age, color, shape, and material are expressed through simple adjectives. The following table highlights some common examples:

aggressive	alert	alive	ancient
anxious	arrow	attractive	average
bad	beautiful	beige	better
big	bitter	black	blue
brown	bumpy	busy	careful
cheap	chestnut	clear	cold
combative	cool	cotton	crazy
crooked	crystal	dangerous	dead
delicious	dim	drab	dry
dull	dusty	elderly	excited
expensive	fancy	fat	few
filthy	fresh	fuzzy	giant
good	graceful	granite	green
handsome	happy	hard	harsh
hollow	hot	huge	hungry
large	lazy	light	long
low	massive	mellow	melodic
miniscule	modern	new	noisy
oak	octagonal	old	orange
oval	petite	pink	plain
plastic	poor	puny	purple
quiet	rainy	red	rich
right	round	sad	safe
salty	sane	scared	shallow
sharp	shiny	short	shrill
shy	skinny	small	soft
solid	sore	sour	square
steep	sticky	strong	superior
sweet	swift	tan	tart
teak	teeny	terrible	tiny
tired	tremendous	triangular	ugly
unusual	weak	weary	wet
whispering	white	wild	wooden
woolen	wrong	yellow	young

2: Compound Adjectives

Compound adjectives are created when two words are combined to create a descriptive adjective.

The two words are typically connected with a hyphen. The following table provides some common examples of compound adjectives:

baby-faced	bow-legged	broken-hearted	bull-headed
candy-stripped	four-sided	freckle-faced	hard-hearted
hard-nosed	heavy-handed	high-heeled	ice-cold
left-handed	life-giving	long-legged	long-winded
next-door	pigeon-toed	red-blooded	self-centered
short-tempered	sure-footed	thin-skinned	tight-fisted

3: Proper Adjectives

The following table lists a number of descriptive adjectives that are derived from proper nouns.

Nations, regions, and religions are common qualities described by proper adjectives. Because they are derived from proper nouns, proper adjectives are always capitalized. For example:

American	Antarctic	Atlantic	Buddhist
Californian	Canadian	Chinese	Christian
Cuban	Ecuadorian	English	French
German	Greek	Hindu	Indonesian
Italian	Mayan	Mexican	Pacific
Peruvian	Roman	Romanian	Satanic
Spanish	Turkish	Victorian	Welsh