Adjectives

Adjectives
They are words that describe the qualities, states or
quantity of nouns. Adjectives do not modify verbs or
adverbs or other adjectives.
Furry dogs may overheat in the summertime.
My cake should have sixteen candles.
The scariest villain of all time is Darth Vader.

They describe nouns and give us more information about

it.
The form of the adjective is the same for singular or plural
nouns. THEY DON’T HAVE PLURAL FORM.
There are two main position of adjectives:
Attributive (before a noun): There is a sharp knife
Predicative adjectives act as a complement to linking
verbs ( feel, seem, or taste that describes a state of
being or a sensory experience) or the verb to be.

That cow sure is happy.

It smells gross in the locker room.
Driving is faster than walking.
Words functioning as adjectives

Descriptive: good, big, new, large, great, tall, short…

Numbers: ordinal numbers (such as third, fourth, fifth) can act
as demonstrative adjectives.
After my third piece of pizza, I was stuffed.
Demonstrative adjectives: (this, that, these, those)
This day could not get any better!
Indefinite adjectives: some, any, all, every, most, each,
many, several...
There are several reasons for my resignation.
Interrogative adjectives: which, what, whose.
What food have you never eaten but would like to try?
Possessive adjectives: my, your, his, he, our, their, mine...
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
Attributive nouns: a coffee pot /bottle opener/airplane
Adjectives ending in –ed and -ing

● Adjective (ING) are used to describe the characteristics

of a person, a thing or a situation.

It’s amazing./ It’s tiring. / It’s appalling.

● Adjective (ED) are used to describe na emotion or a
feeling. It’s usually a temporary thing.

She’s bored./ They are interested in the news.

● If you are describing the person or thing thar cause
those feelings, then use the ING form of the adjective.

It was really confusing. It made me feel confused.

 Verbs as adjectives: '-ing' and '-
The commonest -ing ed’
adjectives are: The commonest -
ed adjectives are:
Amusing annoying boring
Disappointing exciting Annoyed bored closed
interesting frightening delighted
tiring shocking Disappointed excited
Surprising worrying frightened
Tired worried
I read a very interesting
.
article in the newspaper
We had nothing to do. We
today.
were really
That Dracula film was
bored.
absolutely terrifying.
It was shocking to see what
The most common adjective prefixes
and their meaning:
Prefix Meaning Examples
Illegal, Illegible,
imperfect, impolite,
il-, im-, ir-, in- Not/opposite of
irrelevant, irrational,
inconvenient, inactive
Unusual, unhappy,
un- Not/opposite of uninterested,
unpleasant
Dishonest, disloyal,
dis- Not/opposite of
dissimilar, disabled
Ultra-compact,
ultra-, super-, -hyper- Extreme ultrasound,
hyperactive
International,
inter- Between
interdisciplinary
There is no general rule for making adjectives. We know they are
adjectives usually by what they do (their function) in a sentence.
Suffix Meaning Examples
accessible, reliable,
-able/-ible Ability
respectable
Professional, structural,
-al, -ial, -ical Quality, relation
national, legal
Important, dependent,
-ent/-ant Having a certain quality
relevant
Bored, interested,
-ed Having the quality of
fascinated
Generic, archaic, idealistic,
-ic Quality, relation
historic
Boring,
-ing Referring to an activity
interesting, fascinating
Having the character of, babyish, reddish, feverish,
-ish
about, almost foolish
Helpful, colorful, useful,
-ful Having a characteristic
beautiful
Spotless, careless, useless,
Adjectives ending in -ic
and -ical often have
different meanings:

The economic policy of

this government has
failed.

A diesel car is usually

more economical than
a petrol one.
Forming adjectives from other words (6)
Some adjectives are made from nouns and verbs by adding
suffixes.
noun adjective

hero heroic

wind windy

child childish

beauty beautiful

verb adjective

read readable

talk talkative

use useful
Order of adjectives (4)

When more than one adjective comes before a noun,

the adjectives are normally in a particular order.
Adjectives which describe opinions or attitudes (e.g.
amazing) usually come first, before more neutral,
factual ones (red):

She was wearing an amazing red coat. / Not: … red

amazing coat.
The most usual sequence of adjectives is:
order relating to examples

1 opinion unusual, lovely, beautiful

2 size big, small, tall

3 physical quality thin, rough, untidy

round, square,
4 shape
rectangular

5 age young, old

6 colour blue, red, pink

7 origin Dutch, Japanese, Turkish

8 material metal, wood, plastic

general-purpose, four-
9 type
sided, U-shaped

10 purpose cleaning, cooking

It was made of a 1strange, 6green, 8metallic material.
It’s a 2long, 4narrow, 8plastic brush.
Panettone is a 4round, 7Italian, 9bread-like Christmas
cake.

The mnemonic below can be used to help remember the

order in which adjectives should appear:
Opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Color, Origin, Material,
Purpose.
On Saturday And Sunday Cold Ovens Make Pastry.
 Adjectives ending in LY (5)

Some words ending in -ly can be both adjectives and

adverbs. These include daily, early, monthly, weekly, nightly,
yearly:

She gets a weekly payment from her parents. (adjective)

I pay my rent weekly. (adverb)

Some words ending in -ly are only adjectives and not

adverbs. These include: costly, cowardly, deadly, friendly, likely,
lonely, lovely, oily, silly, smelly, timely, ugly, etc.

We enjoyed the trip to America but it was a costly holiday.

Oily fish is very healthy because it contains omega 3.
Adjectives: comparative and superlative

Comparative adjectives compare one person or thing with

another and enable us to say whether a person or thing has
more or less of a particular quality:

This car is more expensive than my last one.

Superlative adjectives describe one person or thing as

having more of a quality than all other people or things in a
group:

Joe used to be the slowest runner in the class..

Compound adjectives (3)
A compound adjective is an adjective which is
made up of two
parts and is usually written with a hyphen. Its
meaning is usually clear from the words it
combines. The second part of the compound
adjective is frequently a present or past participle.
David proved to be a two-faced person.
She is a blonde, blue-eyed girl.
Your colleague is a very good-looking man.
Suzan is a well-behaved little girl.
He is a five-year-old boy.

a well-known author
an English-speaking country
a middle-aged woman
Well-dressed person
a three-hour movie. (numeral +noun)
Daniella is a part-time worker. (noun +noun)
Beware of the green-eyed monster. (adjective+
p.p)
He is a cold-blooded man. (adjective+ p.p)
Danny’s dog is well-behaved. (adverb + p.p)
You have to be open-minded about things.
(verb+ p.p)
I have an old-fashioned coat. (adjective + p.p)
Extreme adjectives (they are not gradable)
I’m very happy to be here. I’m delighted to be here.
I’m very tired./ I’m exhausted.
She is very hungry./She’s starving.
I’m very thirsty./I’m parched.
Pelotas is very clean./Pelotas is spotless.
That car is very dirty. /That car is filthy.
Your sister is very beautiful. She is fabulous.
That’s a very good idea!/ That’s a terrific idea!
That book is very bad. It is awful.
Sandra’s house is quite small. It is tiny.
The shop is pretty big. /Is is enormous, huge.
The comedian is very funny. He is a hilarious.
Tropical Diseases
With the global warming, mosquitoes are everywhere. And this
means that microorganisms
will be spread to new habitats, bringing diseases to new population.
Mosquito-born-malaria, for example, generally appears in humid
regions with
average temperatures above 61 degrees Fahrenheit. Global warming
and the range of
6 to 10 degrees will increase malaria-carrying mosquitoes on 60
percent of the globe.
Climate change is also increasing the range of Aedis aegypti, the
species of mosquito that
carries both dengue and yellow fever. Another deadly threat is the
resurgence of cholera.
(There were 5,000 deaths in the 1991 cholera epidemic in South
America.) How many
will die next time?
“If tropical weather is expanding, tropical diseases will expand.”
01. Find in the text:
The noun and the verb for the adjective deadly
The verb for the adjective carrying
The noun for the adjective warm
A synonym for the verb expand

(A) dead – death, carries, warming, expanding

(B) death – die, carried, warmness, spread
(C) death – die, carry, warning, spread
(D) die – died, carry, warmly, carrying
(E) death – dice, carried, warming, bringing
02. Na frase: “The power of the faction has been heightened
in recent years by the availability of mobile phones,
smuggled through prison security...” (ref.3), as palavras
AVAILABILITY e SECURITY são substantivos. Seus adjetivos
correspondentes são AVAILABLE e SAFE.

Qual(is) par(es) abaixo está(ao) formado(s)

apropriadamente?
weak /weakness; II. long/length; III. dark/darkdom; IV.
high/height;
V. free/freedom
(A) Apenas V está correta;
(B) Apenas II e IV estão incorretas;
(C) Apenas III está incorreta;
(D) Todas as asserções estão corretas;
04. Assinale a alternativa em que o termo destacado é
empregado como adjetivo.

(A) Movie star Julie Christie and NGO Survival International,

both from England, have just launched a campaign…
(B) “The world is certainly big enough for everyone,
including those whose lifestyle is different from ours.”
(C) They are among the most vulnerable people in Earth and
can be devastated in the next 20 years…
(D) The central part is a documentary narrated by her, on
some of the most ancient and threatened tribes of the world.
(E) unless their rights to land are recognized and defended”,
declared Julie to Survival.
09. ◆(Mackenzie) Indicate the alternative that best
completes the following sentence.

"They finally decided to buy a_______."

(A) four-doors car.
(B) four doors car.
(C) four-door car.
(D) four-door-car.
(E) four-car.
Text comprehension 2
Why do we have blood types?
In 1996 a naturopath named Peter D’Adamo published a book
called Eat Right 4
Your Type. D’Adamo argued that we must eat according to our
blood type, in order to harmonise with our evolutionary heritage.
Blood types, he claimed, “appear to have arrived at critical
junctures of human development.” According to D’Adamo, type O
blood arose in our hunter-gatherer ancestors in Africa, type A at
the dawn of agriculture, and type B developed between 10,000
and 15,000 years ago in the Himalayan highlands. Type AB, he
argued, is a modern blending of A and B.
From these suppositions, D’Adamo then claimed that our blood
type determines what food we should eat. With my agriculture-
based type A blood, for example, I should be a vegetarian. People
According to the book, foods that are not suited to our blood type
contain antigens that can cause all sorts of illness. D’Adamo
recommended his diet as a way to reduce infections, lose weight,
fight cancer and diabetes, and slow the ageing process.
D’Adamo’s book has sold seven million copies and has been
translated into 60 languages. It has been followed by a string of
other blood type diet books; D’Adamo also sells a line of blood-
type-tailored diet supplements on his website. As a result, doctors
often get asked by their patients if blood type diets actually work.
The best way to answer that question is to run an experiment.
In Eat Right 4 Your
Type D’Adamo wrote that he was in the eighth year of a decade-
long trial of blood type
Recently, researchers at the Red Cross in Belgium decided to see
if there was any other evidence in the diet’s favor. They hunted
through the scientific literature for experiments that measured
the benefits of diets based on blood types. Although they
examined over 1,000 studies, their efforts were fruitless. “There
is no direct evidence supporting the health effects of the ABO
blood type diet,” says Emmy De Buck of the Belgian Red Cross
Flanders.
After De Buck and her colleagues published their review in the
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, D’Adamo responded on his
blog. In spite of the lack of published evidence supporting his
Blood Type Diet, he claimed that the science behind it is right.
“There is good science behind the blood type diets, just like there
was good science behind
05. (UFPR/2015) According to the text, the expression “that question”
in boldface and italics (paragraph 04) refers to
(A) the question presented in the title.
(B) the string of blood type diet books.
(C) the blood-type-tailored diet proposed by D’Adamo.
(D) the question whether blood type diets actually work.
(E) the experiment which was run to answer the diet question.

06. (UFPR/2015) Mark the correct alternative, according to the text.

(A) The different blood types are the result of the migration movements
human beings performed.
(B) The author of Eat Right 4 Your Type has a website where he publishes
the results of his researches.
(C) The antigens present in our blood type account for the disease we
may develop if we do not eat fresh food.
(D) Researchers from Belgium recommend the blood type diet as a way
to reduce infections and slow the ageing process.
07. (UFPR/2015) Consider the following statements concerning blood types
and their specific diets defended by Peter D’Adamo:
1. Type O blood people must eat a lot of meat and avoid milk, yogurt and
cheese, for example.
2. Type O blood appeared before the other blood types.
3. Type B diet, which is rich in yogurt, milk, cheese and meat, can cause
diabetes.
4. People who want to slow the ageing process or fight cancer and
diabetes should follow the blood type diet.
5. Type A blood people should eat many vegetables because this blood
type is related to agriculture.

Which of the statements above are TRUE, according to Peter D’Adamo’s

ideas?
(A) Only 1 and 3.
(B) Only 2 and 5.
08. (UFPR/2015) Consider the sentence: “There is good science
behind the blood type diets, just like there was good science behind
Einstein’s mathematical calculations that led to the Theory of
Relativity,” Peter D’Adamo says this with the purpose of:
(A) claiming that what he does is science.
(B) admitting that his experiment was based on the Theory of Relativity.
(C) rebuting the criticism towards his website.
(D) presenting an example which confirms his researches.
(E) stating that his study is based on mathematical calculations.

09. (UFPR/2015) According to the text, what is correct to say about

Peter D’Adamo?
(A) He is a Belgium scientist specialized in the area of nutrition.
(B) He receives the support of other doctors to carry out his researches.
(C) He claims that Albert Einstein also followed the blood type diet to
stay healthy.