How adjectives actually behave in a sentence — the order they fall into, how they compare, when they carry opinion rather than fact, and how to reach for a vivid word without overreaching. Guides for writing more precisely, rather than lists of words for one subject.
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How adjectives actually behave in a sentence — the order they fall into, how they compare, when they carry opinion rather than fact, and how to reach for a vivid word without overreaching. Guides for writing more precisely, rather than lists of words for one subject.
C is a big letter, and a good deal of the reason is two Latin prefixes doing heavy work. 29 of the words below begin con- and 17 begin com-, most of them from the Latin for with or together — but not all of them. Conical comes from cone; contrary and controlling both come…
B is the letter of blunt force. Its insults are short and loud — brash, bossy, boorish, brutal — and they land harder than their length suggests. Its compliments are longer and quieter, and a run of the warmest are built on the same Latin bene-, meaning well: benevolent, beneficial, benign. This page lists 132…
D is the letter of disapproval. 37 of the 152 adjectives below begin with dis-, and most of those are complaints — dismissive, disingenuous, disreputable, disgraceful. What is easy to miss is that the same prefix makes several of the letter’s best compliments too: discerning, discreet, discriminating, distinguished. This page lists 152 adjectives that start…
Y is a small letter, and a page that pretends otherwise is padding. English has a few dozen adjectives beginning with Y, and 12 of them cluster around just three ideas: age, the colour yellow, and noises made by animals and by people behaving like them. This page lists 28 adjectives that start with Y…
L is unusually rich in words for pace — languid, lethargic, leisurely, lively, listless — and for several of them the only difference is whether the slowness is a pleasure or a complaint. This page lists 134 adjectives that start with L, grouped by the job each does. Every word has a plain meaning beside…
Close to three fifths of the adjectives in this letter are negations — in-, im- and ir- attached to a word that already existed. That makes I unusually easy to use and unusually easy to use lazily: not accurate and inaccurate are not quite the same sentence, and the second only earns its place when…
R is the letter of temperament under pressure. It holds an unusual number of words for how somebody behaves when things are difficult — resilient, resolute, reckless, resigned, relentless, remorseless — and it carries praise and criticism in roughly equal measure. This page lists 143 adjectives that start with R, sorted by the job you…
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…
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…
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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