Adjectives: Descriptors

Descriptors: the commonest adjectives

Descriptors are the words most people think of when asked about adjectives; words like bright, small, new, beautiful, strong. These types of adjectives are normally gradable: by inflection; brighter, brightest, smaller, smallest, newer, newest, stronger, stronger, or by the use of an adverb; more beautiful, very small, extremely strong.

Descriptors are usually classified thus:

1. Colour/Hue/Brightness: amber, black, blue, bronze, brown, dark, fuchsia, green, grey, indigo, olive, orange, pale, pink, purple, red, salmon, scarlet, violet, white, yellow;
2. Size/Weight/Quantity/Extent: dense, finite, great, high, huge, large, long, low, narrow, small, tiny, wide;
3. Time/Chronology/Frequency/Age: annual, daily, early, late, monthly, new, old, permanent, recent, temporary, young;
4. Evaluative/Judgemental/Emphatic: best, drastic, good, great, important, inferior, intense, legitimate, right, simple, special, superior, utter;
5. General: accurate, appropriate, cold, elaborate, empty, feasible, neutral, open, physical, positive, random, rigid, serious, strong, superficial.

Some of these adjectives may be placeable in more than one of these categories, depending on their use in context.

Examples

• One important thing to know is that light moves very fast. (Baron 2021)
  
  In this sentence there is just one adjective: "important". It is an attributive adjective (coming before the noun) and it is an evaluative descriptor.
• For large collections, storing film in cold vaults is much cheaper than copying. (Ahmad 2020)
  
  In this sentence the adjectives "large" and "cold" are attributive; "cheaper" is predicative.
• Younger kids have small brains and have less mental energy available than older kids kids. noun phrase head (Wilson 2019)
  
  There are five adjectives in this sentence. The adjectives "younger" and "older" are age descriptors (comparatives). The adjective "small" is a size descriptor. The adjective "mental" is not a descriptor; it is a classifier (it restricts the reference of the noun, distinguishing it from other types of energy, and it is non-gradable). The adjective "available" general descriptor and it is a rel="tooltip" class="nowrap". The structure "have less mental energy available than older kids" is an example of correlative subordination.
• This is because white cells work better when your body temperature is higher than normal. (Koirala 2019)
  
  There are three adjectives in this sentence ("better" is an adverb). The adjectives "white" and "higher" are descriptors. "white" is an attributive adjective and "higher" is predicative. The phrase "than normal" is a degree complement of the the adjective "higher". This is a very common comparative construction. The adjective "normal" is a topical classifier. "normal" obviously means the normal body temperature.