An adjective is a word that modifies (gives more information about) a noun or a pronoun.

Examples: tea, old hot man, beautiful girl, white shirt, intelligent student, interesting story, handsome boy, huge room.

In these examples, hot, old, beautiful, white, and intelligent are adjectives because they modify (give more information about) the attached nouns.
Adjectives are classified into three degrees:

• Positive Degree
• Comparative Degree
• Superlative Degree

The degrees of an adjective express the intensity of an adjective in increasing order, e.g., big – bigger – biggest, good – better – best.

Examples:

Positive	Comparative	Superlative
Large	Larger	Largest
Short	Shorter	Shortest
Small	Smaller	Smallest
Happy	Happier	Happiest
Heavy	Heavier	Heaviest
Stronger	Stronger	Strongest
Old	Older	Oldest
Good	Better	Best
Bad	Worse	Worst
Many	More	Most
Little	Less	Least
Attractive	More attractive	Most attractive
Beautiful	More beautiful	Most beautiful

The positive degree is the basic or simplest form of an adjective. It is used to describe a quality of a noun or pronoun without making any comparison.

In this degree, the adjective only describe characteristic of a subject and does not indicate whether it is greater or lesser in degree than others.

Examples:

• This is a big house.
• She is a kind woman.
• The tea is hot.
• He is an intelligent student.
• They live in a beautiful city.

A comparative adjective is used to highlight a characteristic of one thing in relation to another. It makes a comparison between two things (not more than two), indicating that one thing is greater or lesser in degree than the other.

The words ‘than’ and ‘to’ are used after a comparative adjective in a sentence.

Examples:

• A bus is bigger than a car.
• A bed is heavier than a chair.
• John is taller than Sara.
• You are three years older than me.
• A car runs faster than a bike.
• My performance was better than yours.
• You are cleaver than him.
• A laptop is more expensive than a camera.
• David is more intelligent than John.
• Your voice is louder than mine.
• My job is tougher than yours.

Note. For some adjectives, the preposition ‘to’ is employed instead of ‘than’ when making comparisons. Examples of such adjectives include senior, junior, superior, and inferior.

• Senior and junior are generally used for official ranks.
• Superior and inferior are generally used for qualitative comparisons.

Examples:

• A professor is senior to a lecturer.
• He is junior to me.
• She is senior to me.
• Your dress is superior to mine.
• This product is inferior to the one I used last year.
• Modern technology is superior to that of the past.

A superlative adjective is used to describe a characteristic of one things in comparison to many others (more than one). It expresses the highest degree of a quality or quantity of one thing in comparison to many others.

In other words, a superlative adjective indicates that the subject surpasses all others with respect to a specific characteristic.

Example.

• John is the tallest boy in his class.

This indicates that John surpasses all other boys in his class in terms of height. No other boy in his class is taller than John. It makes a comparison of John's height with all other students in his class.

• The words ‘in’ and ‘of’ are used after a superlative degree in a sentence.
• Since a superlative degree specifies one entity in comparison to all others, the article ‘the’ should always be used before a superlative degree in a sentence.

See the following examples:

Examples:

• He is the most brilliant student in his class.
• David is the best player in the team.
• He is the richest person in the town
• My room is the biggest in my house.
• This is the most beautiful shirt in the store.
• Sara is the most talkative girl in his family.
• This is the most expensive computer in the market.
• Paris is the most beautiful city in France.
• Einstein was the most intelligent scientist in the world.
• The river Nile is the deepest river in the world.
• John is the youngest in his family.

A superlative adjective can compare an entity to others even if the other entities are not explicitly mentioned in the sentence. However, the context generally makes it evident that the comparison involves other entities of a similar nature.

Examples.

• A train is the fastest vehicle.
• The easiest way to lose weight is to avoid sugary foods.
• This is the best book I have ever studied.