Descriptive Adjectives: What They Are, With 100 Examples

A descriptive adjective is an adjective that names a quality of a noun: what something is like. In a tall tree, bitter coffee and The room was cold, the words tall, bitter and cold are descriptive adjectives. They answer the question “what kind?”, and they are by far the largest group of adjectives in English.

The other kinds of adjective do a different job. They point to or limit a noun rather than describe it: this book, my book, three books, which book. Grammars often call those limiting adjectives or determiners. (For all eight types side by side, see what is an adjective.)

How to tell if an adjective is descriptive

Three quick tests. A descriptive adjective usually passes at least two of them; a limiting word passes none.

1. Can it answer “what kind?” What kind of coat? A waterproof one. Yes. What kind of coat? That one? No: that answers “which?”
2. Can it go after a verb like be, seem or look? The coat is waterproof. Yes. *The coat is that. No.
3. Can you put very or more in front of it? very warm, more comfortable. Many descriptive adjectives can; limiting words never can (*very my, *more three).

The third test has exceptions inside the descriptive group itself: wooden, dead and annual describe, but you cannot normally say very wooden in the literal sense. These are non-gradable adjectives.

100 descriptive adjective examples, by what they describe

The groups are not just a way to organise a list. When two or more descriptive adjectives stand before a noun, English tends to put them in roughly this order: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose. That is why a lovely old wooden table sounds natural and a wooden old lovely table does not. The full rule, with its exceptions, is in the order of adjectives.

For a much longer word bank sorted by topic (people, places, weather, food), see 250+ describing words and sensory words.

Where descriptive adjectives go

A descriptive adjective can sit in two main places:

• Before the noun (attributive): a narrow street, the nervous candidate.
• After a linking verb (predicative): The street is narrow. The candidate seemed nervous. These are also called predicate adjectives.

Most descriptive adjectives work in both places, but not all. Afraid, asleep, alive and alone only follow the verb: The child was asleep, never *an asleep child (say a sleeping child). A few go only before the noun, such as main, mere and utter: the main reason, not *the reason is main. See attributive-only adjectives.

A third, rarer position is straight after the noun, mostly in fixed phrases and with -thing words: something strange, anyone interested, the people responsible.

Forms a descriptive adjective can take

Descriptive adjectives are not always simple words like red. Several forms do the same job:

• Participles, formed from verbs: a broken promise, a running tap, a bored student / a boring lesson. The -ed/-ing pair trips up many learners; see -ed and -ing adjectives.
• Compounds, two or more words acting as one: a well-known author, a two-hour delay. They usually take a hyphen before the noun; see hyphenating compound adjectives.
• Proper adjectives, made from names: French bread, a Victorian house. They keep the capital letter; see proper adjectives.
• Nouns used as adjectives: a stone wall, a kitchen table. These describe, but they do not take very or comparison; see nouns as adjectives.

Comparing with descriptive adjectives

Because they name qualities that come in degrees, most descriptive adjectives have comparative and superlative forms:

Non-gradable descriptive adjectives (dead, unique, wooden, pregnant) normally have no comparative forms. The details are in comparative and superlative adjectives.

Commas between descriptive adjectives

When two descriptive adjectives describe the noun equally, separate them with a comma: a long, tiring journey. When the second adjective forms a unit with the noun, no comma: a tiring overnight journey (it is an overnight journey that is tiring). The test: if you could put and between them, or swap them, use a comma. More in commas between adjectives.

Using descriptive adjectives well in writing

• Pick one exact word over two vague ones. A very big, very old house says less than a rambling Georgian house.
• Prefer adjectives a reader can check. Beautiful and nice report your opinion; whitewashed and sun-bleached let the reader see it.
• Do not stack them. More than two or three before one noun tires the reader. Move one after the noun or into its own sentence: The house was old, and the paint had faded.
• Let strong nouns and verbs carry some of the load. She walked slowly and sadly can become She trudged. Adjectives work best where nouns and verbs cannot do the job alone.

Common mistakes

Practice: find the descriptive adjectives

Underline the descriptive adjectives. Leave out words that only point or count.

1. Those two old dogs sleep on the warm rug.
2. My brother bought a cheap Italian scooter.
3. The lesson was long, but the teacher stayed patient.
4. Which jacket is waterproof?
5. Several tired hikers reached the rocky summit.
6. Her answer seemed honest and thoughtful.

Answers:

1. old, warm (those and two limit, they do not describe)
2. cheap, Italian (my is possessive)
3. long, patient
4. waterproof (which is interrogative)
5. tired, rocky (several is quantitative)
6. honest, thoughtful

For more practice with every type of adjective, see how to identify adjectives in a sentence.

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