English in 5 minutes! We speak about gradable and non-gradable adjectives, what these are, and which are best for Business English!
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Adjectives are words that describe things, nouns, and they can be divided into two types: gradable or non-gradable. But what does that mean? Well, most adjectives are gradable, and you're probably familiar with a lot of these. Perhaps you learned them in opposite pairs, such as hot and cold, big and small, or good and bad. For these we can have different levels of quality, we can make them stronger or weaker by using words like very, really, a bit, or rather - a bit cold, very cold, or rather cold. These are the adjectives that we use when we are making comparisons.
Your office is a lot smaller than mine, but my salary is a lot bigger than yours.
We also use them as superlatives.
She’s the strongest team leader that I know.
Plus, you can use them with ‘too’.
It’s too hot to work today.
Other adjectives have a meaning which is absolute or extreme, so cannot be made stronger or weaker, nor be used in comparisons or as superlatives. These are the non-gradable ones, such as amazing, awful, or boiling.
The gradable adjective ‘cold’ can be an un-gradable ‘freezing’. ‘Small’ can be ‘tiny’. And ‘tired’ can be ‘exhausted’.
So, with non-gradable adjectives you can't use a quantifier, you cannot say ‘I'm very exhausted’ or ‘I'm very freezing’. No. You are either ‘very tired’, or ‘exhausted’, ‘very cold’ or ‘freezing’. However, you can still make non-gradable adjectives even more extreme by making use of adverbs like completely or absolutely.
I’m completely exhausted. It’s been absolutely freezing in the office today.
They can be difficult to learn, and you’ll need to memorise them, but the good news is that you can use the word really with both gradable and non-gradable adjectives to reinforce their meaning.
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Learn how to use the common English idiom, "A Dime a Dozen" on the latest episode of Stairway to English! Book a class with me: https://italki.com/teacher/8476284
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