Prefixes, numbers, word order and participles

   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]