विशेषण (Adjective)

हिंदी में पढ़ें

ADJECTIVE — The Word That Describes

🎯 Why This Chapter Can Win You 3–5 Marks

Imagine two sentences:

• "I saw a dog."
• "I saw a huge, black, ferocious dog."

The second sentence paints a picture. That picture-painting power comes from Adjectives — and examiners at SSC GD, SSC MTS, RRB Group D and State Police exams love testing them. Almost every error-spotting or fill-in-the-blank section contains at least one adjective question: *"She is more taller than her sister"* ❌ — can you spot the mistake? By the end of this chapter, you will.

Learning Objectives

After this chapter you will be able to:

1. Define an adjective and identify it in any sentence.
2. Recognise the 8 types of adjectives.
3. Use Degrees of Comparison (Positive, Comparative, Superlative) without errors.
4. Apply the correct order of adjectives (OSASCOMP).
5. Avoid the 12 Golden Rule traps that examiners set every year.

1. What is an Adjective?

An adjective is a word that describes or modifies a noun or a pronoun. It answers questions like: *What kind? How many? How much? Which one? Whose?*

• She is a brave girl. (What kind?)
• He has five pens. (How many?)
• This book is mine. (Which one?)

Position of adjectives:

1. Attributive — before the noun: "a tall boy"
2. Predicative — after a linking verb (is, am, are, was, seem, look): "The boy is tall."

⚠️ Some adjectives are used only predicatively: *afraid, asleep, awake, alive, alone, ill*.

✅ "The baby is asleep." ❌ "an asleep baby"

🧠 Active Recall: In the sentence "The tired soldier drank cold water," find (a) the attributive adjectives, (b) tell whether "asleep" can be used before a noun.

2. Types of Adjectives (The Big 8)

Memory hooks:

• *This, that, these, those* + noun = demonstrative adjective. Used alone = demonstrative pronoun.
• "This pen is mine." (adjective) | "This is mine." (pronoun)
• Same test works for *what/which/whose* (interrogative) and *my/your/his* (possessive).

🧠 Active Recall: Identify the type: (a) Every student passed. (b) Whose bag is this? (c) She drank some milk. (d) I like Indian food.

3. Degrees of Comparison — The Heart of This Chapter

Adjectives of quality have three degrees:

How degrees are formed

1. Add -er / -est: tall → taller → tallest; fast → faster → fastest
2. Double the last letter (short vowel + single consonant): big → bigger → biggest; hot → hotter → hottest
3. -y becomes -i: happy → happier → happiest
4. more / most (long adjectives): beautiful → more beautiful → most beautiful
5. Irregular (memorise!):

🔑 The Latin Comparatives (a favourite trap!)

These words end in -ior and take "to", NOT "than":
superior, inferior, senior, junior, prior, posterior, anterior

✅ "She is senior to me." ❌ "She is senior than me."

🎵 Mnemonic: "S-I-S-J-P takes TO"

Superior, Inferior, Senior, Junior, Prior — "SIS-JP goes TO school, never THANks anyone!"

🧠 Active Recall: Correct these: (a) He is more stronger than me. (b) My brother is elder than me. (c) This is the most unique design.

4. Elder vs Older, Later vs Latter — Confusing Pairs

• Elder / Eldest → only for family members, never with "than".
  ✅ "He is my elder brother." ❌ "He is elder than me." → "He is older than me."
• Older / Oldest → for people and things, with "than".
• Later → related to time: "I will come later."
• Latter → the second of two things: "Of tea and coffee, I prefer the latter." (opposite: *former*)
• Farther → physical distance; Further → additional: "further information"
• Latest → most recent in time; Last → final in order.

5. Order of Adjectives — OSASCOMP

When many adjectives come before one noun, English follows a fixed order:

O-S-A-S-C-O-M-P → Opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Colour, Origin, Material, Purpose

🎵 Mnemonic: "Old Students Always Study Carefully On Monday Periods"

✅ "a beautiful small old round black Indian wooden table"

❌ "a wooden black Indian old small round beautiful table"

You will rarely use more than 2–3 together, but exams test: *"a red big car"* ❌ → *"a big red car"* ✅ (size before colour).

🧠 Active Recall: Arrange: "a / leather / brown / lovely / bag" → ?

6. Adjectives Used as Nouns — "The + Adjective"

The + adjective = the whole class of people (plural meaning, plural verb):

• The rich should help the poor. (= rich people, poor people)
• The blind deserve our sympathy.
• The dead cannot return.

❌ "The rich is greedy." ✅ "The rich are greedy."

7. ⚠️ EXAMINER'S TRAP BOX — The 12 Golden Rules

Trap 1 — Sound-Right trap: "She is more wiser than her sister" *sounds* fine to many ears because we hear "more" everywhere. Rule 1 kills it: wiser alone.

Trap 2 — Intervening-phrase trap: "One of the most intelligent students of my class has failed." The long phrase hides the structure — "one of the + plural noun" but singular verb.

Trap 3 — Over-thinking trap: "He is senior to me by five years" is already correct; students wrongly "fix" *to* → *than*.

8. 🔁 Linguistic Bridge — Hindi vs English

9. Summary Table — One-Page Revision

📅 Review After 2 Days

Come back after 48 hours and do this without looking:

1. Write the 7 Latin comparatives that take "to".
2. Write the comparative & superlative of: good, bad, little, far, old.
3. Correct: "She is the most prettiest girl in the class."
4. Expand OSASCOMP and make one sentence with 3 adjectives in correct order.
5. Solve 10 questions from Practice Set 1 and check your score.

If you score 4/5 or more, move to the Important Rules section. If not, re-read Sections 3 and 7 first.