Author
Nathan Cole writes the adjective guides and word lists on Grammar Simplified. Every guide he publishes is checked against Merriam-Webster for spelling and usage, the Chicago Manual of Style for punctuation, and the AP Stylebook where a convention is specific to web writing. Where a rule is genuinely disputed among those authorities, he says so in the guide rather than picking a side quietly. Corrections are welcome and get acted on — see the editorial policy.
900 guides published
Writing about motherhood fails in one of two directions. Either every sentence reaches for selfless and unconditional until the words stop registering, or it goes so far the other way that the difficulty is all that is left. This page gives 80 words to describe motherhood, sorted into the five things people are usually trying…
O is a small letter with a heavy accent. Its best-known words are almost all complaints — obnoxious, officious, obstinate, overbearing, ostentatious — and the handful of compliments it offers tend to be quiet ones: obliging, observant, orderly. This page lists 112 adjectives that start with O, grouped by the job each does, with a…
The question comes in three forms — describe yourself, three words to describe yourself, how would a friend describe you — and they all fail the same way: people reach for hard-working, passionate and team player, which tell a listener nothing because everybody says them. This page gives 122 words to describe yourself, sorted by…
M is the letter of judgement. It holds an unusual number of words that pass a verdict while pretending to describe — mediocre, mawkish, meddlesome, measly, mercenary — and almost as many that praise without gushing: measured, methodical, magnanimous. This page lists 149 adjectives that start with M, each with its meaning and a short…
T is the letter of temperament. It holds more words for how somebody is holding themselves — tense, terse, testy, touchy, taciturn, tranquil — than almost any other. This page gathers 143 adjectives that start with T, sorted by the job you need doing rather than by whether the word flatters, because most of them…
S carries more adjectives than any other letter in English, and the reason matters: it holds three productive beginnings at once — s-, sc- and st- — plus every self- compound. This page lists 199 adjectives that start with S, grouped by the job each does, with a plain meaning beside every word. Because the…
Most lists of adjective examples give you a hundred words with nothing to hang them on. This one gives 196 adjectives arranged by what they actually describe — size, colour, sound, mood, quality — because that is how you look for a word when you are stuck mid-sentence. Each has a short meaning. After the…
N is a small letter that punches above its weight in criticism: negligent, notorious, noxious, nitpicking. It also holds some of the most precise words in English for things that are only half there — nebulous, nascent, notional. This page lists 100 adjectives that start with N, each with its meaning and a short example,…
Christmas writing has a vocabulary problem: festive, magical and cosy do about ninety percent of the work, and by the second paragraph the reader has stopped seeing them. This page sorts 74 adjectives for Christmas into the six jobs the season actually asks of a describing word, so you can reach past the first three….
E is the most common letter in English, and its adjectives are unusually good at carrying feeling — elated, exasperated, exhausted, envious. This page gathers 122 adjectives that start with E, arranged by the job you need doing rather than by whether the word is a compliment, because most of them can be either depending…
Grammar Simplified
Plain-English grammar guides and curated adjective lists. Free to read, checked against Merriam-Webster, Chicago and AP before publication.
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