Adjective

Types of Adjectives

* Adjectives of Relation – childlike, pillowy, bookish, etc. Adjectives of relation are formed by adding a suffix to a noun. Some adjectives of relation, called non-standard or irregular adjectives, come from a root word other than the common noun (bovine instead of cow-like, marineinstead of sea-related). See the List of Irregular English Adjectives.

* Proper and Common Adjectives – Swedish chocolate vs. darkchocolate. See Capitalizing Proper Adjectives for a short review. Most proper adjectives denote nationality; see the list of Nouns and Adjectives Denoting Nationality and the List of Adjectival Forms of Place Names.

* Eponymous Adjectives – Shakespearean, Victorian, Boolean, etc. Eponymous adjectives are (usually) proper adjectives derived from a person’s name. See the List of Eponymous Adjectives in English.

Using Other Words Used As Adjectives

* Participles – cascading waterfall, broken table, etc. Participles areverbs used as adjectives, formed from a verb’s present participle (writing, wrecking) or past participle (written, wrecked).

* Attributive Nouns or Noun Adjuncts - business partner, strawberrylemonade, etc. Attributive nouns act like attributive adjectives, but not predicative ones; you can’t say the lemonade is strawberry, for example. Don’t confuse attributive nouns with compound nouns; the attributive noun is the noun acting as an adjective (strawberry), and the compound noun is the combination of the two nouns (strawberry lemonade).

* Compound Adjectives – pinkish-purple, mind-boggling, etc. Compound adjectives, just like compound nouns, can be formed from many combinations of other parts of speech. In fact, compound adjectives are often just compound nouns (strawberry lemonade) used as attributive nouns (strawberry-lemonade color).

Determiners

Traditional grammar and many dictionaries consider determiners a type of adjective, but Wikipedia’s Determiner entry points out some key differences. Here...