What Is a Predicate Adjective?

What is a predicate adjective? Before you know the answer to this question, you need to understand the basic structure of a sentence.

Subjects and Predicates

A sentence expresses a complete thought as opposed to a phrase that can give a lot of information, but does not complete the whole thought. All sentences have a subject and a predicate. The subject is the person, thing, place, or idea that the sentence is about and can be a noun, a pronoun, or a noun phrase. The predicate tells something about the subject, like what it did or how it looks.

An example of a simple sentence where there is a noun for the subject and a verb for the predicate is “Mary jogs.” Sometimes the subject is implied in a sentence, like “Watch out!” The person you are addressing is the subject of the sentence, so the sentence is “You watch out!”

A simple predicate has a verb, a string of verbs, or a compound verb. Examples of these three are: “She swam.” “She has been swimming.” and “She swam, got tired, and climbed out of the pool.” The verb is “swam” the verb string is “has been swimming” and the compound verb is “swam, got tired, and climbed”  

What Is a Predicate Adjective?

A predicate adjective is part of the predicate of a sentence and describes the subject. Most descriptive adjectives can become predicate adjectives. The predicate adjective is linked to the subject with a linking verb like: is, are, was, were, has been, or will be.

Here are some sample sentences to help answer the question, “What is a predicate adjective?” The predicate adjective is underlined.

• The cat is black.
• My backpack is big, heavy, and cool.
• The temperature was frigid.
• Our children are here.
• Your gift will be appreciated.
• The performers were strong and effective.
• His enthusiasm has been unstoppable.
• The boats were wooden, brown, and un-sinkable.
• The bride’s face was aglow. 

Predicate adjectives can be used with pronouns, like in “I am happy” and “You are brilliant.” Predicate adjectives can be proper adjectives as in: “That chocolate is Swiss” and “The car is German.” A predicate adjective can be hyphenated, as in “The disease is wide-spread” or “The product is over-rated.” 

A final example to answer the question, “What is a predicate adjective?” is a group of special words. These are adjectives that can only be used as a predicate adjective. They are: asleep, alone, alive, aglow, afraid, and afloat.   

Other Kinds of Adjectives

There are so many adjectives in the English language they can be classified many ways. Here are the main categories of adjectives according to their use and a few examples.

• Quantity adjectives tell how much and can be definite or indefinite, like: seven, few, several, all, some, every, each, or many.
• An opinion adjective are simply that; the opinion of the speaker and it is purely subjective. Examples include: important, evil, better, pretty, ugly, rare, disgusting, and amazing.
• Some adjectives describe the size of the object. They include: big, small, slim, svelte, scrawny, giant, plump, and gigantic.
• Age adjectives would include old, antique, young, youthful, recent, modern, elderly, and baby.
• Shape adjectives are another example of descriptive adjectives and some are round, oblong, wavy, crooked, distorted, sleek, spherical, and triangular.
• Color adjectives are many in number. They include: purple, white, brownish, pastel, tanned, dark-blue, and yellow.
• Some adjectives tell the origin of the object such as Canadian, Indian, Swiss, Spanish, lunar, polar, southern, and Californian.
• Another descriptive adjective tells the material which the object is made of.  Examples are: cotton, polyester, glass, plastic, china, metal, steel, and wooden.
• Purpose adjectives would include words like work, fishing, sleeping, racing, walking, folding, swinging, and cooking. 

You should also know that there are many more out there that describe, or modify, nouns and pronouns. Some of these kinds of adjectives would be: emotion, personality, sound, touch, taste, smell, speed, temperature, distance, brightness, and time.