The English language would be very dull without adjectives. They dress up our nouns whenever we need to punch things up a notch. So, that heartache you're feeling is no longer heartache, it's crippling heartache, or debilitating heartache that is tearing you apart, or maybe just a small heartache that you'll get over quickly.

Whenever you're speaking or writing, you may want to get your point across with a little extra oomph. When it's time to do so, call in the big dogs, the adjectives.

Adjectives Accentuate the Point

Adjectives help express the tone, feelings, and emotions of our words by accentuating the point. Let's take our example of heartache above. It would be difficult to quickly ascertain how severe (or minor) that heartache is, without the use of those adjectives.

Of course, context clues would eventually reveal more, but adjectives allow us to succinctly describe a situation so we can continue along in our story, essay, or speech.

Through tone, a reader is able to gain an overall sense about a character's personality or disposition. It can even shape an entire piece of writing, making it feel serious, funny, dramatic, or upsetting.

Without the adjectives in these examples, we wouldn't know if this was going to be a story about sadness or hope:

Tone-Setting (Negative): With a heavy heart, the girl walked to the mailbox and mailed her letter.

Tone-Setting (Positive): The excited girl walked to the mailbox and mailed her letter.

Emotions and feelings are very similar. In fact, the definition of feeling is to have an emotion. The only difference is that emotions tend to refer to that which isn't tangible, while feelings are something you can kind of put your finger on. But, that's really splitting hairs. Let's take a closer look.

Emotions can't be easily seen. We can guess that someone is either sad or happy but emotions aren't always expressed. Rather, it's something we sense:

Adjective for Negative Emotions: The miserable boy walked home in the rain.

Adjectives for Positive Emotions: The jubilant boy walked home in the rain.

Often, feelings are something we can more visibly see or experience. Whether someone's sad, mad, happy, or ecstatic, feelings tend to house our emotions, amplifying a particular situation. For example:

Adjectives for Negative Feelings: The shy girl flushed with embarrassment.

Adjectives for Positive Feelings: The delighted girl flushed with anticipation.

Adjectives for Tone, Feelings, and Emotions

To Describe a Positive Tone
fresh	open	animated	devoted
loving	sympathetic	encouraging	supportive
kind	clever	warm	hopeful
To Describe a Negative Tone
sarcastic	narcissistic	heavy	bitter
obnoxious	foolish	disgruntled	hurtful
disgusted	irritated	nasty	oppressive
anxious	horrified	annoyed	resentful
sick	guilty	downcast	overbearing
To Describe Other Tones
involved	sardonic	intelligent	religious
political	secular	bashful	democratic
republican	mysterious	conservative	bright
cautious	liberal	quizzical	secretive
To Describe a Positive Feeling
happy	amazed	free	wonderful
clean	strong	beautiful	excited
great	bold	gorgeous	attractive
better	agreeable	brave	calm
delightful	festive	gentle	jolly
proud	shy	optimistic	cheerful
To Describe a Negative Feeling
angry	sadistic	moody	cold
pessimistic	sad	chilly	thirsty
nervous	tired	weak	evil
terrible	dreadful	dirty	ugly
dreary	awful	stupid	dumb
To Describe a Positive Emotion
upbeat	joyful	sweet	serene
respectful	appreciative	contented	jubilant
To Describe a Negative Emotion
aggravated	miserable	mad	grumpy
tearful	selfish	depressed	sour

Tips for Using Adjectives

It can be difficult to find just the right word to describe a tone or feeling being experienced by someone. You never want to come across sounding trite, or use an adjective that's too weak to express the gravity of a particular situation.

It's a bit like building your vocabulary. The more you read, the more you'll discover new words and meanings, including adjectives, and how they are used to highlight emotions.

That said, like anything else that's good in life, keep it in moderation. Don't douse every noun in sugar. Instead, sprinkle a little sweetness on the situations or words that will truly benefit from a tasty addition.

Here are three things to remember when describing tone, feelings or emotions:

Clarity: Adjectives should help clarify your writing, not muddy the waters. So, take a quick scan through your work. Do your adjectives illustrate the point or situation? Are they at all unnecessary? For example, do you need to say "the hot, sweaty baseball player" or just "the sweaty baseball player"?
Overindulgence: Again, don't pick a slew of different adjectives: "The timid, nervous teacher slowly approached the noisy classroom with fearful trepidation." If you start using too many adjectives, your writing quickly becomes flowery. Not only are you going to confuse your readers, but your writing will appear choppy and even phony.
Time: Don't be afraid to take some time to figure out a situation. For example, you might have to analyze the tone of a short composition. Sit back for a while and let the words really sink in.

Hopefully, these tips will help you not only use adjectives in your own writing but also teach them to your children or students. Much like their cousin, the adverb, they add so much to our writing when used properly.

For a quick cheat sheet, refer to our printable list of adjectives. This is only a selection of the thousands of adjectives available in the English language, but it should be enough to shift the writer's block you or your students may be feeling the next time you need to convey a certain tone, feeling, or emotion!

selection of faces showing different emotions

View & Download PDF

Link/Cite

Link to this page

Cite this page

MLA Style

"List of Adjectives to Describe Tone, Feelings, and Emotions." YourDictionary. LoveToKnow. grammar.yourdictionary.com/parts-of-speech/adjectives/list-of-adjectives-to-describe-tone-feelings-emotions.html.

APA Style

List of Adjectives to Describe Tone, Feelings, and Emotions. (n.d.). In YourDictionary. Retrieved from https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/parts-of-speech/adjectives/list-of-adjectives-to-describe-tone-feelings-emotions.html

List of Adjectives to Describe Tone, Feelings, and Emotions

By YourDictionary

The English language would be very dull without adjectives. They dress up our nouns whenever we need to punch things up a notch. So, that heartache you're feeling is no longer heartache, it's crippling heartache, or debilitating heartache that is tearing you apart, or maybe just a small heartache that you’ll get over quickly.