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The classical Greek noun that best translates to the English-language words "beauty" or "beautiful" was κάλλος, kallos, and the adjective was καλός, kalos. This is also translated as "good" or "of fine quality" and thus has a broader meaning than mere physical or material beauty.
An adjective (abbreviated adj.) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase.Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main parts of speech of the English language, although historically they were classed together with nouns. [1]
Such adjective phrases can be integrated into the clause (e.g., Love dies young) or detached from the clause as a supplement (e.g., Happy to see her, I wept). Adjective phrases functioning as predicative adjuncts are typically interpreted with the subject of the main clause being the predicand of the adjunct (i.e., "I was happy to see her"). [11]
Where an adjective is a link, the link is to the language or dialect of the same name. Many place-name adjectives and many demonyms also refer to various other things, sometimes with and sometimes without one or more additional words. Additionally, sometimes the use of one or more additional words is optional.
Nominalization is a process whereby a word that belongs to another part of speech comes to be used as a noun. This can be a way to create new nouns, or to use other words in ways that resemble nouns. In French and Spanish, for example, adjectives frequently act as nouns referring to people who have the characteristics denoted by the adjective.
An adjective phrase is a group of words that plays the role of an adjective in a sentence. It usually has a single adjective as its head, to which modifiers and complements may be added. [26] Adjectives can be modified by a preceding adverb or adverb phrase, as in very warm, truly imposing, more than a little excited.
The following compound modifiers are always hyphenated when they are not written as one word: An adjective preceding a noun to which -d or -ed has been added as a past-participle construction, used before a noun: "loud-mouthed hooligan" "middle-aged lady" "rose-tinted glasses" A noun, adjective, or adverb preceding a present participle:
The adjective-like nature of these prepositional phrases is indicated by the tendency for them to be hyphenated in writing and the fact that they can typically be paraphrased with an adjective phrase (compare the endangered postal service). [40] Similarly, adjective-like clauses can function as pre-head modifiers of nouns.