Maria drives a big, blue car. She enjoys her 20-minute journey to work. Maria drives a big, blue car. She enjoys her 20-minute journey to work.
We can make adjectives with numbers and nouns. For example:
It's a 4-hour flight.
We need a three-week training course.
They live in a two-bedroom apartment.
He's writing a 20-page report.
He's giving a 15-minute presentation.
Note that
1. We can write the number as a word or a number:
a 3-storey building
a three-storey building
2. These adjectives never have a plural form:
This apartment has two bedrooms. 
It's a two-bedrooms apartment. 
It's a two-bedroom apartment.
When we use more than one adjective, we need to place them in the correct order. This is the most usual order:
1. Opinion | 2. Size | 3. Colour | 4. Nationality | 5. Material |
nice lovely beautiful horrible delicious
|
big small long short tall |
red blue yellow brown blonde |
French English Spanish Italian German |
wooden metal plastic cotton glass |
For example:
She wore a lovely long, blue dress.
I have some beautiful yellow chairs.
She has short, dark hair.
It was a horrible plastic table.
We had a delicious Spanish wine.
I bought a wonderful big, brown, Italian leather handbag.
We use the present and past participles of some regular verbs as adjectives.
| 'ing' | describes a quality or cause | It was a frightening experience. |
| 'ed' | describes an effect or feeling | I was frightened. |
We can describe a person as 'boring', 'annoying', 'exciting' etc. but we rarely use the 'ing' form with 'I' so:
I'm exciting about that.
I'm excited about that.
He's exciting to be with. [I'm never bored when I'm with him.']
| The exercise confused us. | The exercise was confusing so... | ...we were confused. |
| Edward interests me. | He's an interesting man. | I'm interested in him. |
| This book bores me. | It's a boring book. | I'm bored with this book. |
Here are some more examples:
| 'ing' adjective | 'ed' adjective |
| tiring | tired |
| exciting | excited |
| frightening | frightened |
| surprising | surprised |
| worrying | worried |
| annoying | annoyed |
| embarrassing | embarrassed |
| fascinating | fascinated |
Note that
1. We rarely place this kind of 'ed' adjective directly before a noun.
I spoke to an annoyed man.
I spoke to a man who was annoyed.
2. There are some 'ing' adjectives that do not have this kind of meaning. They are gerunds which we use as adjectives to specify different kinds of things. For example:
He had to show the policeman his driving licence.
I'm starting a new training course.
To make some adjectives negative, we use prefixes. Almost all these adjectives have only one possible prefix - 'un', 'in' and 'dis' are not interchangeable. Although, there are some adjectives which use 'un' and 'dis' e.g. 'unsatisfied' and 'dissatisfied'; 'unorganised' and 'disorganised', these words have subtly different meanings. If you are not sure, check in a good dictionary.
It's always a good idea to learn the negative form when you learn a new adjective. Here are some examples:
Prefix | Used with | Examples |
un |
some adjectives beginning with a vowel or a consonant
|
unreasonable, unhappy, unpopular, unavailable, unusual, unable |
in |
some adjectives beginning with a vowel (except i and u) or a consonant
|
inactive, indecent, indecisive, incomplete |
ir |
some adjectives beginning with 'r' |
irregular, irresponsible, irrational, irresistible
|
il |
some adjectives beginning with 'l' |
illegal, illiterate, illegitimate, illegible, illogical
|
im |
some adjectives beginning with 'm' or 'p'
|
immature, immoderate, impossible, impatient, immoral, immobile, imperfect |
dis |
some adjectives beginning with a vowel or a consonant
|
disloyal, dishonest, dissatisfied, disobedient |
Note that we don't use negative prefixes with all adjectives. Sometimes we need a different word.
For example:
big ≠ small
soft ≠ hard
Be careful because some English adjectives have more than one meaning and different opposites. For example:
light [5g] ≠ heavy [2kg]
light ≠ dark [colours]