You may need a whole day to build up an adjective words list. And way longer to memorize them all. The adjective is one part of grammar that covers almost a third of the dictionary. Since these words are to define or describe a situation or a person, it sure is very useful to memorize. But do you have to memorize them all?
Table of Contents
Should you memorize all adjectives?
You don’t have to memorize all adjectives known in the dictionary. But you can look for the easiest one to remember and try to look for the synonyms in the thesaurus.
While memorizing the adjective itself may not sound difficult. But when you’re looking for new words or use another word to describe something, you will find pleasure in finding these synonyms.
For example, instead of saying a girl is pretty, you can always say that she is an attractive one, or maybe even call her easy in the eye.
There are so many examples of adjectives that you can use interchangeably and they are most likely already in your vocabulary. So again, you don’t have to worry about memorizing an adjective words list.
Types of Adjectives
In general, there are two types of adjectives that you need to know. The descriptive and the limiting ones. As you can guess, each has a different purpose.
A descriptive adjective is just as the name implies, that it is there to describe. Whether it’s a situation or someone’s physical and intellectual attributes. You are using these words to say what you think about them. And yes, these adjectives cover both pejorative and ameliorative ones.
Most adjectives that you know fall into this category. Things like pretty, sad, happy, rainy, and so on. You can use them interchangeably as long as they have the same meaning.
While the limiting adjective is there to restrict the nouns and pronouns. It gives context to the nouns about the situation. For example, when you say “I have fifty coins left.” You limit the noun by describing to your partner that you only have fifty coins. But that’s not the only example, you also can say “these are my books.” You are showing possession and describing who is the owner of the books.
What Else You Should Know
You also can use a regular word as an adjective. For example, “Lisa said she bought a Canadian backpack.” Canadian is the adjective it describes the backpack that Lisa bought. The same goes for ordinal words. You can use words like first, second, and third to describe someone or something.
With this knowledge, memorizing the adjective words list seems like a herculean task. But you don’t need to worry since most of them are already in the dictionary. Most adjectives also have noun forms to help you recognize the meaning.
Find adjectives lists using SBN search engine
Our Spelling search Engine provides a special syntax to find specific kind of words, to find list of adjectives just add the !adj keyword to your query, for instance if you want a list of adjectives suitable for grade 3 students, starting with the letter p you can type in the search box:
grade:3 p !adj
Conclusions
Adjective covers thousands of words that may seem impossible to memorize. However, you can always rely on your knowledge of the original words. You can always print or look for an adjective words list to train your memory. Adding more words to your vocabulary will do you more good than harm.
