Name: The Complete Guide to ADJECTIVES in English
Uploaded: 2026-01-19T18:23:09.000Z
Duration: 17 min 42 s
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In today's video, I'm going to show you all the adjective types.

Now the reason I'm doing this is someone asked me what's the difference between an adjective clause and an adjective phrase?

And I realized that I could make a much better lesson if I showed you all the adjective types so that you can always recognize them in a sentence and understand how to use them and basically what is happening in the sentence.

So I put these into three categories that I'm going to discuss.

We're going to have simple adjectives and there are 13 of them and I'll show you what those are.

Okay, so let's start with the simple adjectives and keep in mind that this word simple, this is just my word.

Also, I'm going to give you some sort of technical names for all of these adjectives.

If you look at different grammar books, they may use different words, they may use limiting adjectives or what's another one they use determiners.

The technical grammar words make sure you understand what is actually happening.

It's more important to understand that than the technical grammar terms which don't actually mean anything because you won't use them except in English class.

So I'm going to call this one descriptive.

Descriptive is the common adjective that everybody knows.

It's also called attributive because you're giving a noun an attribute, right?

Because this is what adjectives do in all forms.

An adjective modifies a noun, it changes a noun, or it gives it more character or identity, etc.

So when you're just describing something, a big dog or a small child, a heavy box, all kinds of things, just to give it a little bit of character, a little bit of colour.

Then we have the demonstrative adjectives, also called demonstrative pronouns.

This cat, these people, those houses, etc.

That's why they're also called the pronouns.

A compound is basically a combination of two words.

Now in this case, in this example, fat, free milk.

Fat and free are both adjectives joined by a hyphen and they create a one word adjective.

This is considered, this is considered now one word to modify the noun milk.

But you can also have an adjective and a noun.

You can have an adjective and a participle.

You can have all different types of compounds that work together as an adjective.

You're basically talking about the quantity of something.

A predicate adjective is the adjective that comes after the verb, but

it's going to be a copula verb or a be verb.

So the nice describes the subject he, not the verbs.

So it's not an adverb, even though it's coming after the verb.

And if you're not entirely sure how to use copula verbs or even what copula verbs are, I made a video about this.

You can review this grammar point and then come back here to see the adjectives again.

Basically er or est, a taller boy, a tallest girl.

And we can also have comparative and superlative phrases, which I'll show you later.

As soon as you have more than one word, you're already creating a phrase.

Now, there's another simple adjective called a coordinate, like the big and loud dog, but big and loud.

Now you have a phrase, which is why I didn't include it here.

I'll talk about that when we look at phrases.

Proper adjectives, just like proper nouns.

You're talking about a name, so in this case, Canadian maple, as opposed to Japanese maple.

So you can have country names, city names, people names, a Shakespearean play, Parisian night, etc.

All kinds of different things, as long as it's the name and it has the capital at the beginning, even in the middle of the sentence.

The e is capitalized even though it's an adjective.

And inside the sentence, indefinite means it's not entirely clear.

So because we don't know exactly, it's called indefinite distributive.

You're distributing among individual people or things or places, so each student, every teacher, all workers, etc.

So when you have a question with a noun, that question word is technically working as an adjective.

So until you answer it, the which is the adjective.

When you answer it, that building is the one I live in.

That is now a demonstrative adjective, and it replaces the interrogative adjectives.

So possessive adjectives, also called possessive pronouns.

My house, his girlfriend, her teacher, and so on.

Now, articles, the reason I want to mention them separately is because articles are articles.

They're not actually adjectives, but they work like adjectives.

They are still determinants because there are many cars, but the car is specific one.

Okay, so now if you look here, there are only 12.

The 13th I'm going to talk about separately because it can be a little bit confusing.

This is the participle or the participial adjective, which sometimes can be a little bit confusing.

Okay, so now we're going to look at the participle adjective, and

in doing so, we're already going to get a bit of an introduction into the clauses and phrases.

The first thing you need to recognize is that this is actually a verb, not an adjective, but

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The Complete Guide to ADJECTIVES in English

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