A quality adjective is a word that describes what something is like. Kind, heavy, blue, ancient, noisy. It answers the question “what kind?”
They are also called adjectives of quality, and they are by far the largest group of adjectives in English.
the red door a kind teacher an ancient building
Each one tells you what kind of thing it is.
The test
Put the word in this gap:
What kind of ___ is it?
If your word answers that question, it is a quality adjective.
- What kind of dog? A friendly dog. Quality adjective.
- How many dogs? Three dogs. Not a quality adjective; that is a number.
- Which dog? That dog. Not a quality adjective; that is pointing.
How it differs from the other kinds
This is the part worksheets ask about, and the part that confuses people. English adjectives are usually sorted into these groups.
| Kind | Answers | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Quality | What kind? | brave, soft, yellow, ancient, noisy |
| Quantity | How much? | some, little, enough, whole |
| Number | How many? | three, first, many, several |
| Demonstrative | Which one? | this, that, these, those |
| Possessive | Whose? | my, your, his, their |
| Interrogative | Used to ask | which, what, whose |
Only the first row describes a characteristic. The rest point, count, or claim ownership.
A list of quality adjectives, sorted by what they describe
- Appearance: Tall, short, wide, narrow, round, shiny, dull, clean, dirty, neat
- Colour: Red, blue, golden, pale, dark, bright
- Character: Kind, brave, honest, selfish, patient, cheerful, rude, generous
- Feeling: Happy, tired, anxious, calm, excited, lonely
- Size: Huge, tiny, enormous, minute, vast, slim
- Age: Ancient, modern, young, elderly, new, antique
- Texture: Rough, smooth, sticky, silky, coarse
- Sound: Loud, quiet, noisy, silent, shrill
- Taste and smell: Sweet, bitter, sour, spicy, fragrant, stale
- Value: Useful, worthless, precious, cheap, essential
Where they sit in a sentence
Quality adjectives appear in two positions.
Before the noun:
a quiet street
After a linking verb such as is, was, seems or became:
the street was quiet
Both are correct. The second is often stronger in writing, because the adjective lands at the end of the sentence where the emphasis is.
When you use more than one
English has a fixed order for stacked adjectives, and native speakers follow it without knowing it exists.
opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose
a lovely little old round red Italian wooden dining table
Change the order, and it sounds wrong immediately, even though every word is correct. Try “a red old little lovely table.”
Most writing uses two adjectives at most. If you have stacked four, the sentence is usually doing too much.
The mistake in student writing
Quality adjectives are where writing gets vague, because the easiest ones carry almost no information.
- good, bad, nice, interesting, big
“A nice teacher” tells the reader nothing. Patient, funny, strict, or encouraging each tells them something different.
The exercise: take a paragraph, find every good, bad, and nice, and replace each with a word that says which kind of good.
Practise it
Name the quality adjective in each sentence.
- She gave a brave speech to three hundred people.
- Those ancient walls have stood for a thousand years.
- My older brother has a loud laugh.
Answers: brave; ancient; loud. In sentence 3, “my” is possessive and “older” is comparative, so the only plain quality adjective is loud.
Where to go next
- English grammar in plain English, including all eight parts of speech
- Build your English vocabulary, for stronger word choice
- 9th grade vocabulary words
- Check a sentence and see suggestions for weak adjectives
Questions people ask
What is a quality adjective in simple words?
A word that says what something is like, such as kind, heavy or ancient. It answers “what kind?”
What is the difference between quality and quantity adjectives?
Quality adjectives describe a characteristic and answer “what kind?” Quantity adjectives describe amount and answer “how much?” Brave is quality; enough is quantity.
Is “beautiful” a quality adjective?
Yes. It describes what something is like, so it answers “what kind?”
How many quality adjectives can you use at once?
Grammatically, several, in a fixed order. In practice, two is usually the limit before a sentence gets heavy.
For a fuller classification of this word class, see the overview of English adjectives on Wikipedia.