(2) Adjectives of quantity, used to tell how many things are spoken of, or how much of a thing.

(3) Demonstrative adjectives, pointing out particular things.

(4) Pronominal adjectives, words primarily pronouns, but used adjectively sometimes in modifying nouns instead of standing for them.  They include relative and interrogative words.

DESCRIPTIVE ADJECTIVES.

143.  This large class includes several kinds of words:—­

(1) SIMPLE ADJECTIVES expressing quality; such as safe, happy, deep, fair, rash, beautiful, remotest, terrible, etc.

(2) COMPOUND ADJECTIVES, made up of various words thrown together to make descriptive epithets.  Examples are, “Heaven-derived power,” “this life-giving book,” “his spirit wrapt and wonder-struck,” “ice-cold water,” “half-dead traveler,” “unlooked-for burden,” “next-door neighbor,” “ivory-handled pistols,” “the cold-shudder-inspiring Woman in White.”

(3) PROPER ADJECTIVES, derived from proper nouns; such as, “an old English manuscript,” “the Christian pearl of charity,” “the well-curb had a Chinese roof,” “the Roman writer Palladius.”

(4) PARTICIPIAL ADJECTIVES, which are either pure participles used to describe, or participles which have lost all verbal force and have no function except to express quality.  Examples are,—­

Pure participial adjectives:  “The healing power of the Messiah,” “The shattering sway of one strong arm,” “trailing clouds,” “The shattered squares have opened into line,” “It came on like the rolling simoom,” “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.”

Faded participial adjectives:  “Sleep is a blessed thing;” “One is hungry, and another is drunken;” “under the fitting drapery of the jagged and trailing clouds;” “The clearness and quickness are amazing;” “an aged man;” “a charming sight.”

[Sidenote:  Caution.]

144.  Care is needed, in studying these last-named words, to distinguish between a participle that forms part of a verb, and a participle or participial adjective that belongs to a noun.

For instance:  in the sentence, “The work was well and rapidly accomplished,” was accomplished is a verb; in this, “No man of his day was more brilliant or more accomplished,” was is the verb, and accomplished is an adjective.

Exercises.

1.  Bring up sentences with twenty descriptive adjectives, having some of each subclass named in Sec. 143.

2.  Is the italicized word an adjective in this?—­

The old sources of intellectual excitement seem to be well-nigh exhausted.

ADJECTIVES OF QUANTITY.