Describing Words

Concept: Degrees of Comparisons

Definition

• Describing words are those words that give more information about the noun.
• Describing words explain a noun by comparing it to another noun. Adjectives are used to make comparison between two or more nouns.
• While making the comparison, the adjective mostly takes the ending ‘er’ or ‘est’ along with the word ‘than’ is used in such sentences.

Examples:

Comparative Degree

When two things or people are compared to each other, we use the comparative degree of an adjective by placing 'er' to the describing word along with the word than' in the sentence.

Examples:

Superlative Degree

A superlative degree talks about the lowest and the highest quality of the describing words.

Examples:

More about Comparative and Superlative Degree

1. Comparative degree is also used to describe how a particular thing or person changes. In such cases, we can use two comparatives along with the conjunction ‘and’.

Examples:

1. Petrol is becoming more and more expensive.
2. The elastic just got longer and longer.
2. Comparative degree is also used to show the quality of a thing in relation to another thing.

Examples:

1. Snehal ran faster than Jennifer in the race.
2. Rohan was happier than Jade on that day.
3. Always use ‘the’ before the superlative degree.

Superlative degree shows that the person, place or thing has the highest or the lowest quality in comparison to the rest of the group. When speaking about one particularly unique quality, ‘the’ is usually added before the superlative degree.

Examples:

1. My lunch box is the smallest out of all.
2. This mango tree is the tallest in the garden.

Exceptions

1. Some words don’t take suffixes ‘er’ or ‘est’. They take ‘more’ or ‘most’ in the beginning while changing into comparative or the superlative degree.

Examples:


2. Some words don’t take ‘er’ or ‘est’ and ‘more’ or ‘most’. The words change while making the comparison. So, don’t add suffixes like ‘er’, ‘est’, ‘more’, and ‘most’ to such words.

Examples: