{"id":73804,"date":"2020-04-06T06:11:04","date_gmt":"2020-04-06T06:11:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/?p=73804"},"modified":"2020-04-06T06:11:04","modified_gmt":"2020-04-06T06:11:04","slug":"gradable-adjectives-and-adverbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/gradable-adjectives-and-adverbs\/","title":{"rendered":"Gradable Adjectives And Adverbs"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Gradable adjectives and adverbs<\/h3>\n<p>Some <a href=\"http:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/kinds-of-adjectives\/\">adjectives<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/what-are-adverbs\/\">adverbs<\/a> refer to qualities which are gradable. For example, people can be more or less pleasing; jobs can be more or less difficult. Other adjectives and adverbs refer to non-gradable qualities \u2013 we cannot have more or less of them. Examples are <em>perfect, impossible, dead, round<\/em>.<\/p>\n<h3>Degree modifiers<\/h3>\n<p>We use certain words or expressions to add the idea of degree to gradable adjectives and adverbs. They are called degree modifiers. Examples are: <em>very, too, as, so, enough, rather, somewhat, pretty, moderately, quite, fairly, a little, a bit<\/em> etc.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>This book is\u00a0<b>very expensive.<\/b><\/li>\n<li>The tea is\u00a0<b>too hot.<\/b><\/li>\n<li>She is\u00a0<b>quite tall.<\/b><\/li>\n<li>I am\u00a0<b>extremely grateful\u00a0<\/b>to you.<\/li>\n<li>You are driving\u00a0<b>a bit fast.<\/b><\/li>\n<li>It was\u00a0<b>a rather unpleasant experience.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Points to be noted<\/h3>\n<p><b>A little\u00a0<\/b>and\u00a0<b>a bit\u00a0<\/b>are mostly used before adjectives and adverbs expressing negative ideas.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>She looked\u00a0<b>a bit tired.\u00a0<\/b>(BUT NOT \u2026 a bit happy\/pleased.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We do not use\u00a0<b>a little\u00a0<\/b>and\u00a0<b>a bit\u00a0<\/b>with adjectives in attributive position.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It was\u00a0<b>a rather strange experience.\u00a0<\/b>(NOT \u2026 a bit strange experience.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b><a href=\"http:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/enough-enough-to-too-to\/\">Enough<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>comes after its adjective.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You are not\u00a0<b>old enough\u00a0<\/b>to have grandchildren.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In a formal style,\u00a0<b>must\u00a0<\/b>can be used before adjectives with the same meaning as\u00a0<b>very.<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>That is\u00a0<b>most interesting.\u00a0<\/b>(= That is very interesting.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Before adjectives and adverbs,\u00a0<b>very, too, so, as\u00a0<\/b>and\u00a0<b>how\u00a0<\/b>are normally used without\u00a0<b>much.<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>She is\u00a0<b>very beautiful.\u00a0<\/b>(NOT \u2026very much beautiful.)<\/li>\n<li>She is\u00a0<b>too young.\u00a0<\/b>(NOT \u2026 too much young.)<\/li>\n<li>I don\u2019t care\u00a0<b>how expensive<\/b>\u00a0it is. (NOT \u2026 how much \u2026)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>However, these words can be used with\u00a0<b><a href=\"http:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/much-many-more-most\/\">much<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>before comparatives.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It is\u00a0<b>very (much) colder\u00a0<\/b>than yesterday.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gradable adjectives and adverbs Some adjectives and adverbs refer to qualities which are gradable. For example, people can be more or less pleasing; jobs can be more or less difficult. Other adjectives and adverbs&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[251],"tags":[2531,806,2530],"class_list":["post-73804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grammar","tag-adjectives-and-adverbs","tag-degree","tag-degree-modifiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73804"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73805,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73804\/revisions\/73805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}