List of descriptive word


List of Descriptive Words: Adjectives, Adverbs, & Participles

Which is more intriguing — a dark, spooky night or a pitch-black, starless, ominous night? Would you rather eat a delicious cake or a mouthwatering, sugar-sweet chocolate cake? Using descriptive words makes readers feel like they’re in your scene instead of just reading it. When you’ve got the proper list of descriptive words, you can easily turn handsome into chiseled or pretty into dazzling.

lists of descriptive adjectives, adverbs, and participles

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Adjectives as Descriptive Words

Adjectives are descriptive words that modify nouns. They’re what you need to tell the difference between an acrobatic cat, a delirious cat, and a precious cat (or maybe a cat that’s all three).  

acrobatic

adorable

adventurous

bitter

boundless

bright

brilliant

brittle

delirious

diminutive

exultant

filthy

foolhardy

gregarious

intrepid

jocular

joyful

jubilant

keen

kooky

lanky

lazy

limp

lush

luxurious

macabre

magnanimous

mellow

miserable

nimble

nocturnal

opulent

ornate

ordinary

palatial

parsimonious

peevish

picturesque

potent

practical

precious

putrid

questionable

quirky

radiant

raspy

rustic

scornful

scrumptious

silky

sly

spider-like

spectacular

tentacular

tense

thorny

verdant

whimsical

woeful

zesty

Adverbs as Descriptive Words

Use an adverb to describe an action rather than a noun, or if you want to add even more detail to an adjective. Most adverbs end in -ly (though not all of them), and they’re helpful ways to strengthen your writing.

amusingly

angrily

apathetically

assertively

begrudgingly

blissfully

blithely

boldly

boisterously

chillingly

coyly

darkly

dazzlingly

deafeningly

dutifully

eagerly

facetiously

faintly

falteringly

frivolously

greedily

grimly

gloweringly

guiltily

hastily

hungrily

intelligently

kindly

lavishly

lazily

listlessly

masterfully

meagerly

methodically

naively

narrowly

neglectfully

nerve-wrackingly

numbly

offensively

passionately

pleasantly

pointlessly

quickly

rapidly

rashly

secretly

seriously

swiftly

tactfully

teasingly

tenderly

timorously

tragically

underhandedly

vacantly

vividly

weirdly

youthfully

zealously

Participles as Descriptive Words

You can even use verbs as describing words — although they’re called participles in that context. Past participles end in -ed or -en, present participles end in -ing, and they all look like descriptive words that you probably use all the time.

acclaimed

accomplished

amazing

amused

baby-faced

battered

beaten

bleeding

boring

broken

blushing

bow-legged

captivating

cluttered

confusing

chosen

complicated

condemned

crystallized

customized

dazzling

depressed

disgusting

distressing

disturbing

dreaming

driven

dyed

embarrassing

exciting

far-reaching

fascinated

freckled

frustrating

hard-hearted

humiliating

interesting

irritating

lying

melted

mouthwatering

peaked

puzzling

relaxing

riveting

satisfied

scared

scented

shocking

sickening

side-splitting

staggering

sweeping

tattered

threatening

thrilled

tired

towering

weathered

wrinkled

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Using Descriptive Words in Your Writing

Descriptive words help paint a picture in the reader's mind. The sentence "It was windy," might give the reader information, but it's not very descriptive. Consider how much imagery you can add with the words gusty, torrential, breezy, or windswept in front of your nouns.

Using descriptive words can:

  • bring characters to life in a novel or short story
  • sell an item in a product advertisement
  • convince an audience in a persuasive writing piece
  • explain the setting of a news story
  • provide instructions for a DIY project

Using illustrative descriptors makes your writing impossible to put down. Whether you're using descriptive words in poetry or informational writing, there are always opportunities to make sentences more vivid.

Describing Our World With Words

When it comes to using descriptive words, variety is key. Go beyond the list of adjectives, adverbs, and participles above to help you set the scene with just the right imagery.

  • Appeal to your readers' senses with a list of strong sensory words.
  • Use descriptive words for scents to describe pleasant (or unpleasant) smells.
  • Describe an aquatic scene with water words for descriptive writing.
  • Learn to describe a person’s (or character’s) physical appearance.
  • Choose the right descriptive words to describe someone’s personality.
  • Paint a delicious picture with descriptive language for food.

Staff Writer

  • elementary school
  • middle school
  • high school
  • college

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List of Descriptive Adjectives

Developing a full list of descriptive adjectives for the English language would be a formidable task. Why? Because English is a language that welcomes modifiers with open arms. Just to keep it simple, explore some descriptive adjectives that are simple, compound or proper.

List of Descriptive Adjectives: Simple, Compound and Proper

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What Are Adjectives?

Adjectives are words that describe nouns. Specifically, adjectives describe the action, state or quality that nouns refer to. Descriptive adjectives are the largest class of the three most prominent types of adjectives. The other two main types being quantitative and demonstrative adjectives. Let's look at all three to see how they are different.

  • Descriptive adjectives work to provide information about a quality of a noun. In the sentence, "My beautiful friend is a model," the word beautiful is a descriptive adjective.
  • Quantitative adjectives provide information about a quantity of a noun. So, if you say, "She has many friends," many is a quantitative adjective.
  • Demonstrative adjectives emphasize the importance of the noun and whether it's near or far. In the sentence, "I want that vase," the word that is your demonstrative adjective.

To help you get a clear idea of the largest adjective group, take a closer look at some examples of descriptive adjectives.

An Organized List of Descriptive Adjectives

You can organize a list of descriptive adjectives into three categories to help writers and speakers better manage this large class of words. See a small sample of examples of each of three kinds of adjectives.

Simple Adjectives

Simple adjectives, as their name suggests, are the most basic kind of descriptive adjectives. They function to express quality. These types of adjectives include those for describing feelings and emotions, the taste of something, and appearance. You might also use adjectives to describe sounds and time. Since this list is large, check out a small preview of simple adjectives.

alive

ancient

bumpy

busy

combative

cotton

dangerous

dusty

elderly

expensive

graceful

granite

handsome

hollow

lazy

low

massive

melodic

minuscule

new

octagonal

oval

petite

puny

rainy

right

safe

sane

shrill

shy

sore

superior

swift

teak

terrible

tremendous

ugly

weary

wild

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Compound Adjectives

Compound adjectives are created when two words are combined to create a descriptive adjective. The two words are typically connected with a hyphen. The table provides some common examples of compound adjectives.

baby-faced

bow-legged

broken-hearted

bull-headed

candy-stripped

four-sided

freckle-faced

hard-hearted

hard-nosed

heavy-handed

high-heeled

ice-cold

left-handed

life-giving

long-legged

long-winded

next-door

pigeon-toed

red-blooded

self-centered

short-tempered

sure-footed

thin-skinned

tight-fisted

Proper Adjectives

A number of adjectives are derived from proper nouns. Nations, regions and religions are common qualities described by proper adjectives. Because they are derived from proper nouns, proper adjectives are always capitalized. See a few different examples of proper adjectives.

American

Antarctic

Atlantic

Buddhist

Californian

Canadian

Chinese

Christian

Cuban

Ecuadorian

English

French

German

Greek

Hindu

Indonesian

Italian

Mayan

Mexican

Pacific

Peruvian

Roman

Romanian

Satanic

Spanish

Turkish

Victorian

Printable List of Adjectives

Looking for more descriptive adjectives? Then you might enjoy this printable list of descriptive adjectives for a person.

View & Download PDF

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Putting Adjectives in Order

When using multiple descriptive adjectives in a sentence, there is an order in which you should arrange them. Adjectives that describe opinion typically precede adjectives that describe color, size, shape, and more. For example, the sentence "The ugly, red chair sat in the corner" is preferable to "The red, ugly chair sat in the corner."

In addition, adjectives are usually arranged in a sentence from those that are more general in scope to those that are more specific. For example, "The big, Egyptian mask hung on the wall" is preferable to "The Egyptian, big mask hung on the wall," and "The blue, silken curtains are perfect in the bedroom," is preferable to "The silken, blue curtains are perfect in the bedroom."

Using Adjectives in Writing and Speech

Writers and speakers can refer to a list of descriptive adjectives for ideas on how to better explain the action, state or quality that a noun in a sentence refers to. Understanding that there are three main types of descriptive adjectives can provide further insight into how these important words can be used.

With a good descriptive adjective resource and a little creativity, you can begin to add more personality to your writing. Speaking of which, enjoy examples of personality adjectives. It might help bring your characters to life!

Staff Writer

Adjectives characterizing a person - list

Rubric: For every day

Here are collected words (adjectives) that characterize a person (both a man and a woman). Words are arranged in a list, for convenience, divided by letters of the alphabet. This list can be useful to you for compiling a resume, characterization, compiling announcements (for hiring or searching for a person) and simply for describing people (if necessary).

Please note: Not all adjectives that can describe a person are collected here, but only those that can characterize people (that is, there are no such words as “beautiful”, “tall”, “small”, “barrel-shaped”, "shaved", etc. They refer to the description of appearance and are not related to the description of personality, character, behavior).

A

  • Adventurized
  • Authority
  • Aggressive
  • adequate
  • Azartic
  • Neat
  • ALCH
  • Elogical (illologian - opposite - opposite logic)
  • Altruistic (altruistic)
  • Alcohol addict
  • Immoral
  • Ambitious
  • Amorphous
  • Anecdotal
  • Apathetic
  • 0011 Apathetic
  • Apolitical
  • Ascetic
  • Assertive rights, not to depend on external assessments, influences and do it without violating the rights others)
  • Asocial
  • Autical
  • Artistic
  • aristocratic

B

  • Balled
  • Vigilant
  • Black
  • Perelandic
  • Harvested.0012
  • Windle
  • Nonsense
  • Explosive
  • Scruffy
  • Guilty
  • Fitty
  • ACTIVITIVE
  • Available
  • exalted
  • exalted
  • exalted attitude towards something or someone)
  • Strong-willed
  • Free
  • Free-thinking
  • Freedom-loving
  • Thievish
  • Grouchy
  • Receptive
  • Enthusiastic
  • Impressive
  • Hostile (hostile, hostile-cold)
  • Harmful
  • Omnivorous (here - promiscuous, not the one who eats everything)
  • Fixing
  • vulgar
  • Office
  • Outstanding
  • Highly moral
  • Highly exaggerated
  • highly developed
  • High -EVEIDEN0012
  • Great
  • Trusty
  • Hasty
  • Lolder -out
  • Dominative
  • House
  • Decent
  • Bulbed
  • NEDDICAL (here, DEMODICAL
  • DRIMEN ignorant)
  • Friendly
  • Dirty
  • Bad
  • Foolish
  • Spiritual and moral
  • Spiritual
  • Mental
  • Mentally ill
  • 0012

E

  • Broken
  • Bossy
  • Natural
  • Echered
  • greedy
  • Miserable
  • hard, reinforced concrete)
  • Bile
  • Effeminate
  • Feminine
  • Womanly
  • Cute
  • Cruel
  • Rigid
  • Critical
  • Painting
  • MORY
  • Cultural
L
  • LABIL (here is mood)
  • Laconic
  • Latent Latent
  • Light (not for weight. easy "on the rise")
  • Gullible
  • Frivolous
  • Frivolous
  • Easily irritable (easily irritated)
  • Easily controllable
  • Easily vulnerable
  • Unseasoned (not about cognac, but about the lack of endurance in a person)
  • Unbearable
  • Unbearable
  • Disharmonious
  • Negative (negatively tuned) , thinking)
  • Shallow (here is not about the depth of the reservoir, but about the depth of the inner content of a person)
  • Non-proud
  • Inhospitable
  • Illiterate
  • Unnecessary
  • optional (here is not a loving obligations that does not recognize them, avoiding duties, etc.)
  • incorpected
  • Fear
  • Fisherous
  • Direct
  • 2 Unsuitable
  • NOTSED NOW THE
  • NOT Untrue
  • Non-idle
  • Impractical
  • Unpredictable
  • Unforeseen
  • Inflexible
  • Moral
  • Cut

O

  • Charming
  • Obvornoye
  • Offective
  • Offended (here in the meaning - offended by life, on fate, etc. )
  • deceitful
  • See Educated
  • Sociable
  • Objective
  • Compulsory
  • Gifted
  • Possessed (here in the meaning - obsessed with work, work, the devil, etc.)
  • Standard
  • dull
  • Lastly
  • Desperate
  • Owl
  • Oygnidic
  • numb, charming
  • Eye
      • PADKY; ; avid for everything new, etc.)
      • Dirty
      • Memoryful
      • Paradoxical
      • Paranoid (here - a paranoid type of personality and as a result - a certain style of thinking, behavior, etc., characteristic of a person of this type)
      • Consistent
      • Obedient
      • Mediocre
      • Constant (here in the meaning - constant in his views, principles, attitude, etc.)
      • Shabby
      • Lost (here in the meaning - lost to society, life, etc.)
      • Amusing
      • Terrific
      • Lustful
      • Respectful
      • Vulgar
      • Vulgar
      • Truthful
      • Truthful20012
      • Written
      • Generally
      • Great
      • Admissible
      • Disgrasting
      • Unpleasant
      • Present
      • Fresh (here about a person in the significance - boring, without "dys -tied")
      • 12, without "pepper).
      • Boring
      • Criminal
      • Terrible
      • Successful
      • Fastidious
      • Affable
      • Silly
      • Director
      • Rectoline
      • Mice
      • Scarecrow
      • Bulbed
      • Punctual
      • Empty (empty person, “Pie with nothing”, etc.)
      • Emilland
      • Putic 9001
      • Empty-headed
      • Inquisitive

      Р

      • Submissive
      • Indifferent
      • Equal in rights
      • Equal in rights
      • Radical1
      • 0012
      • wasteful
      • Calculated
      • Refined
      • rational
      • reactive (here in the value - high -acting, quick, energetic, etc.)
      • Realistic
      • Jealous
      • Rare
      • Rare
      • Rare
      • Rent -on
      • Sharp
      • Retrograde
      • Decisive
      • Risky
      • Timid
      • Respectable
      • Romantic
      • Sharp (here in the meaning - much capable of hands, capable of much capable of hands)
      • Private (in the sense of ordinary)

      C

      • Demonial
      • Herly
      • Self -sufficient
      • Self -sufficient
      • Self-forgetting
      • Self-proclaimed
      • Self-loving
      • Self-confident
      • Self-confident
      • Self-critical
      • Self-confident
      • Angry
      • Compassionate (here - compassionate, compassionate)
      • Serious
      • Grey-footed (here it means ill-mannered, awkward, unable to behave, unable to behave, not allowed in a decent society, etc. )
      • Strong (not necessarily physically strong, for example: a strong-minded person, mentally strong, mentally strong, etc.) .)
      • Scaby
      • Scandalous
      • Skaed
      • Bad
      • Skeptical
      • Small
      • constrained (here is clamped, numb, constrained)
      • Slippery (here in the meaning is slippery, unreliable, unless. dishonest, ambiguous, obscene, dubious)
      • Modest
      • Secretive
      • Scrupulous
      • Poor-minded
      • Stingy
      • Stingy
      • capable (in the meaning-gifted, talented)
      • stable (constant, durable, sane, emotionally stable, socially stable, etc.)
      • Street
      • shy
      • STARTICAL
      • CESTURE
      • Strange
      • Passionate Passionate
      • Impetuous
      • Stress resistant
      • Strict
      • Obstinate
      • Shy
      • Subjective
      • Superstitious
      • Fussy
      • vain
      • Business
      • Crazy
      • Happy
      • mysterious
      • Talented
      • solid (here in the meaning - reliable, insistent, disgusting, disgraced, non -imminent man) , narrow-minded, stubborn, etc. )
      • Creative
      • Dark (here - dense, uneducated, caveman)
      • Temperamental
      • Patient
      • Fulb
      • Fatovskaya
      • feminine
      • FISH
      • Philosophical (for example: Philosophical, Philosophical, Juits, etc.)
      • Flematic
      • Frivolny (for example:: for example:: Fundamental

      Х

      • Charismatic
      • Boastful
      • Crappy
      • Cunning
      • Cunning
      • Cunning ass
      • Cunning
      • Cold-blooded
      • Hospitable
      • Choleric (having a choleric temperament, not the one who is sick with cholera)
      • Cold (this is not about temperature, but about mental Colds)
      • Holey
      • Commercial
      • Good
      • Brave
      • Hooligan
      • Khrenovy

      9000

      • Purposeful
      • CINICIAL
      • CEAL0012
      • tongued
      • bright
      • ardent (about any inclinations of a person. For example: an ardent defender of children, an ardent reformer, an ardent loafer and a lazy person, an ardent hater of fools)
      • Furious
      • Clairvoyant

      Note:

      • All of the above words (adjectives) can describe any person - a man, a woman, a teenager, and in many cases a child. To do this, you just need to change the ending of the desired word.
      • Also, remember: according to the rules of the Russian language, some of the above words can be both an adjective and a participle (depending on the context in which the word is used).
      • This list does not include obscene words and words that are specific terms used by narrow specialists for professional purposes.

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      Children's Descriptive Adjective List

      Children's Descriptive Adjective List can help students understand this part of speech and improve their writing. Describing words for children should focus on adjectives that children have heard or words that are easy for them to pronounce and spell.



      What are descriptive adjectives and words?

      Words that describe people, places, and things, or nouns, are called adjectives. You can remember this by thinking, "the adjective adds something."



      • The descriptive adjective is one of the three main types of adjectives.
      • Descriptive adjectives or descriptive words give detailed information about a subject.
      • Descriptive adjectives can help you understand what something looks like, how many it is, what size it is, or what it's made of.
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      Printable Adjective List

      Helpful Descriptive Adjective Tips

      Learning adjectives can be challenging for kids, but it can also be a lot of fun. Look for creative ways to share adjective examples to make the most of these grammar lessons.

      • Buy or print flash cards with descriptive adjectives. Hold up a picture of a person, animal, or other noun and let the children sort through the stack of cards to find the right word to describe the picture.
      • After the child writes a paragraph or story, circle all of its adjectives and invite them to come up with new adjectives that could be used instead of the ones circled.
      • Use library crazy spelling to help kids learn different adjectives with humor.
      • Encourage children to combine adjectives when describing things like "adorable brown dog" rather than just "dog."
      • Teach your child to use a thesaurus or a children's dictionary to spice up their writing and keep a list of new adjectives they discover.
      • You can also try banning certain common adjectives to help your child think outside the box and make their writing come alive.

      Describe in detail

      Writing in elementary school is important because this is the time when children really develop their own vocabulary and writing style.


      Learn more


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