Question

What is the difference between evaluative and descriptive adjectives?

Answer 1

Hint: Adjectives are also called describing words. Adjectives answer questions like what kind, how many, which one, how much, etc.

Complete answer:
Adjectives are words which tell us about a certain characteristic, feature or quality of a noun or a pronoun. Hence, they are also referred to as describing words. There are many different types of adjectives that are used in the English language.

The most commonly used category of adjectives is called ‘descriptive adjective’. These are adjectives which tell us about the general attribute or quality of a noun or a pronoun. These adjectives are also called ‘qualitative adjectives’. For e.g.
- The boy is hungry.
- The dog is tired.
- The bench is wooden.

When these qualitative adjectives are used for qualities which can be compared, then these adjectives are known as ‘evaluative adjectives’. For e.g.
- This is a fast car.
- The dinner was good.
- The paintings were beautiful.

These are all evaluative adjectives, as these adjectives can be compared. The car could be slow. The dinner could be fine, or bad. The paintings could be ugly.

Therefore, we can say that descriptive adjectives are qualitative adjectives which tell us about any quality of a noun. On the other hand, evaluative adjectives are a part of descriptive adjectives and they only talk about qualities that can be compared or evaluated.

Note:
i) Some other types of adjectives that are commonly used are; quantitative adjectives, possessive adjectives, interrogative adjectives, etc.
ii) Quantitative adjectives are those which tell the quantity of the noun. For e.g. numbers, many, less, some, etc.
iii) Possessive adjectives are those which tell us who the object belongs to. For e.g. mine, his, hers, yours, theirs, etc.
iv) Interrogative adjectives are those which are used to ask questions. For e.g. which, what, etc.