Fifty most common adjectives in English
Hey there! Below is a list of adjectives people often use to describe things like people, places, and events. It was created based on the EF English Proficiency Index; the top 50 adjectives most commonly utilized in the English language are as follows:
- good
- big
- small
- hot
- cold
- expensive
- difficult
- easy
- new
- old
- happy
- sad
- beautiful
- ugly
- long
- short
- fast
- slow
- hard
- soft
- strong
- weak
- young
- old
- rich
- poor
- happy
- sad
- important
- unimportant
- interesting
- boring
- funny
- serious
- real
- fake
- true
- false
- big
- small
- heavy
- light
- near
- far
- up
- down
- in
- out
- on
- off
This list is compiled from over 1 billion words and includes adjectives used in many situations.
What are adjectives?
Adjectives are super helpful because they help describe nouns or pronouns. They can tell us about a noun’s size, shape, color, weight, age, or other attributes. They can even help us specify a particular item within a group or indicate quantity.
Grammatically, adjectives can be used in a variety of ways. They can be used attributively, which means they come before the noun they describe. For example, “The big dog ran across the field.” Adjectives can also be used predicatively, which means they come after the noun they describe. For example, “The dog was big.”
Adjectives can also be used to form comparative and superlative forms. Comparative adjectives compare two things, and superlative adjectives are used to compare three or more things. For example, “The bigger dog ran faster than the smaller dog.”
Here are some examples of how adjectives are used in grammatical sentences:
- Attributive: The red ball rolled down the hill.
- Predicative: The ball was red.
- Comparative: The bigger dog is faster than the smaller dog.
- Superlative: The biggest dog in the litter is the fastest.