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33. When man began to invent words to express his ideas of the world in which he lived, we have found that probably the first need was that of names for the things about him. So we have nouns. The second need was of words to tell what these things do, and so we have verbs. But primitive man soon felt the need of other classes of words.

The objects about us are not all alike. For example, we have a word for man, but when we say man that is not sufficient to describe the many different kinds of men. There are tall men, short men, white men, black men, strong men, weak men, busy men, lazy men. There are all sorts of men in the world, and we need words by which we can describe these different types and also indicate which man we mean.

34. So we have a class of words which are called adjectives. Adjective is a word derived from the Latin. It comes from the Latin word ad, meaning to, and the Latin word jecto, which means to throw; hence an adjective is a word thrown to or added to a noun.

If you will stop to think for a moment, you will see that it is by their qualities that we know the things about us. Some men are strong, some are weak, some are tall, some are short. These qualities belong to different men. And we separate or group them into classes as they resemble each other or differ from one another in these qualities. Things are alike which have the same qualities; things are unlike whose qualities are different. Apples and oranges are alike in the fact that both are round, both are edible. They are unlike in the fact that one is red and one is yellow; one may be sour and the other sweet. So we separate them in our minds because of their different qualities; and we have a class of words, adjectives, which describe these various qualities.

35. We use adjectives for other purposes also. For example, when we say trees, we are not speaking of any particular trees, but of trees in general. But we may add certain adjectives which point out particular trees, as for example: these trees, or those trees, or eight trees or nine trees. These adjectives limit the trees of which we are speaking to the particular trees pointed out. They do not express any particular qualities of the trees like the adjectives tall or beautiful express, but they limit the use of the word trees in its application. So we have our definition of the adjective.

36. An adjective is a word added to a noun to qualify or limit its meaning.

Exercise 1

Underscore all of the adjectives in the following quotation. Notice also the nouns and verbs in this quotation.

Yet fearsome and terrible are all the footsteps of men upon the earth, for they either descend or climb.

They descend from little mounds and high peaks and lofty altitudes, through wide roads and narrow paths, down noble marble stairs and creaky stairs of wood—and some go down to the cellar, and some to the grave, and some down to the pits of shame and infamy, and still some to the glory of an unfathomable abyss where there is nothing but the staring, white, stony eye-balls of Destiny.

They descend and they climb, the fearful footsteps of men, and some limp, some drag, some speed, some trot, some run—they are quiet, slow, noisy, brisk, quick, feverish, mad, and most awful in their cadence to the ears of the one who stands still.

But of all the footsteps of men that either descend or climb, no footsteps are so fearsome and terrible as those that go straight on the dead level of a prison floor, from a yellow stone wall to a red iron gate.—From The Walker. Giovannitti.