Look at these examples to see how gradable and non-gradable adjectives are used.
It's really cold.
It's absolutely freezing.
This exercise is really difficult.
This exercise is completely impossible.
Try this exercise to test your grammar.
- Grammar test 1
Grammar explanation
Gradable adjectives
Most adjectives are gradable. This means we can have different levels of that quality. For example, you can be a bit cold, very cold or extremely cold. We can make them weaker or stronger with modifiers:
She was quite angry when she found out.
The film we saw last night was really funny!
It can be extremely cold in Russia in the winter.
Here is a list of some common gradable adjectives and some modifiers that we can use with them.
| Modifiers | a little/a bit → | pretty/quite → | really/very → | extremely |
| Adjectives | angry, big, boring, cheap, cold, expensive, frightening, funny, hot, interesting, old, pretty, small, tasty, tired, etc. | |||
Non-gradable: absolute adjectives
Some adjectives are non-gradable. For example, something can't be a bit finished or very finished. You can't be a bit dead or very dead. These adjectives describe absolute qualities. To make them stronger we have to use modifiers like absolutely, totally or completely:
Thank you, I love it! It's absolutely perfect!
Their farm was totally destroyed by a tornado.
My work is completely finished. Now I can relax.
Here is a list of some common absolute adjectives and some modifiers that we can use with them.
| Modifiers | absolutely/totally/completely |
| Adjectives | acceptable, dead, destroyed, finished, free, impossible, necessary, perfect, ruined, unacceptable, etc. |
Non-gradable: extreme adjectives
Adjectives like amazing, awful and boiling are also non-gradable. They already contain the idea of 'very' in their definitions. If we want to make extreme adjectives stronger, we have to use absolutely or really:
Did you see the final match? It was absolutely amazing!
After 32 hours of travelling, they were absolutely exhausted.
My trip home was really awful. First, traffic was really bad, then the car broke down and we had to walk home in the rain.
Here is a list of some common extreme adjectives and some modifiers that we can use with them.
| Modifiers | absolutely/really |
| Adjectives | amazing, ancient, awful, boiling, delicious, enormous, excellent, exhausted, fascinating, freezing, gorgeous, terrible, terrifying, tiny, etc. |
Do this exercise to test your grammar again.
- Grammar test 2
Hi Jeffery,
Different writers and publishers have different ideas about how to use commas -- in general, we call these kinds of choices 'style'. Questions of style are not ones we really address, but here it could be that the writer preferred the comma because the idea that the costumes are tiny is separate from the idea that they are silly.
In other words, they aren't silly because they are tiny -- they are just silly even if they're not tiny. Please know, however, that I might be wrong about that.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Oona,
It's perfectly fine to use almost with non-gradeable adjectives:
You can also say almost totally (or almost completely) as in your example.
A modifier is any word which changes the meaning of another verb by restricting or adding to it. Adverbs can be modifiers but so can adjectives, for example.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Fredy,
For boring you could use stultifying or mind-numbing, for example.
For nice, there are many possibilities depending on the context. Nice has a very wide range of uses, so we'd need to know the context before making a suggestion.
You can find alternatives like this with any good thesaurus.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello rachel s,
Certain adjectives can function as both gradable and limit adjectives and can be modified by either type of adverb. For example, we can say:
Other adjectives like this are full, empty, beautiful, black, delicious, new and possible.
Angry is not one of these, however. You need to use an adverb for gradable adjectives with this word.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team