Nouns and adjectives are important parts of speech. While nouns help us to name persons, things, objects, places and other concrete things, as well as give shape to abstract ideas, adjectives help us to qualify the nouns and impart more meaning to the nouns they qualify.
The sentence ‘That is his CAR’ tells us that the car belongs to him. CAR is a noun.
The sentence ‘There is DIRT on the car’ gives us more information. DIRT is also a noun.
The sentence ‘That is his DIRTY Car' gives us the same information. Here the word DIRTY tells something more than the first sentence and we form opinions about the car and the person. DIRTY is an adjective which is derived from the word DIRT.
Many adjectives are derived from nouns. If you remember our quizzes on compound nouns we came across words that were formed from a combination of nouns and adjectives. In this quiz we will learn how to convert nouns into adjectives.
Most nouns are converted into adjectives by the simple addition of a suffix. In the DIRTY example we formed the word from DIRT by adding the suffix Y. Similarly, LOGIC is a noun and by adding the suffix AL we make the word LOGICAL, which is an adjective. Other nouns can be formed by adding a suffix with some minor modifications. For example, from the noun TREACHERY we form the adjective TREACHEROUS and we notice that we have removed the Y and added OUS. Similarly, there are a number of suffixes that can be added to nouns to form adjectives. Here are some examples:
VISION and VISIONARY
WEEK and WEEKLY
FORCE and FORCEFUL
WORKMAN and WORKMANLIKE
ARTIST and ARTISTIC
BASE and BASELESS
COMIC and COMICAL
IMP and IMPISH
The quiz that follows exposes you to many more adjectives that are formed from nouns.