Difference between Adjective and Adverb

Category: English || Published on : 2020-11-20 15:43:25 || Author : TILS EDUCATION 1908


There are a lot of things where we get confused between. In such things there is one thing which often confuses us, that is the difference between Adjective and Adverb. Sometimes both look similar, sometimes they confuse us with their positions in a sentence. But there is so much difference between both on the basis of their usages and types.
Here we have a solution to remove this confusion. Let’s learn the basics and clear the difference between Adjective and Adverb.

Adjective – Adjective is a word that describes and qualifies a noun or a pronoun in a sentence. It identifies the noun or pronoun in the sentence.
1. An adjective usually, but not all the time comes before the noun and pronoun which has been described by it.
For example: - The flower of that plant is blue.
Here blue is the adjective which is describing its noun flower. As we can see here the adjective is not applied before noun.
2. An adjective basically is an answer of a few different questions like ‘What kind’, Which’, or ‘How many’.
For example: - My beautiful mother had a silk sari.
Here, beautiful. and silk. are the adjectives which answer the question ‘what kind’.
3. An adjective has the responsibility to modify the pronoun in the sentence.
For example: - They played all the day and they were happy.
Here, the adjective happy tells more about the pronoun ‘they’ rather than anything else.
4. Adjective and Adverb have differences on the basis of their types. Adjective can be classified into several types as mentioned below: -
• Adjective of Quality – e.g. Mumbai is a large city.
• Adjective of Quantity – e.g. He ate some rice.
• Adjective of number – e.g. My basket has five apples.
• Demonstrative Adjective – e.g. These grapes are sour.
• Interrogative Adjective – e.g. Which way shall we go?

Adverb – Adverb is a word that describes the verb and adjectives in the sentence.
1. Adverb generally ends with ‘ly’. But recognizing adverb with having ‘ly’ in end is not a good idea because there are certain cases where ‘ly’ in end makes adjective instead of adverb. For example: - Early, Daily, Cowardly, Friendly etc.
2. An adverb is an answer to few questions such as ‘How’, ‘when’, ‘Where’ or ‘How much’. For example: - She lived in the home peacefully.
Here, peacefully is an adverb and the answer of question ‘How’.
3. An adverb has the responsibility to modify adjectives and other adverbs in the sentence.
For example: - Her mother is extremely beautiful.
Here, beautiful is an adjective that modifies the mother and extremely is an adverb that modifies the adjective ‘beautiful’.
4. Adjective and Adverb have differences on the basis of their types. Adjective can be classified into several types as mentioned below: -
• Adverb of time – e.g. She came late.
• Adverb of frequency – e.g. She has told me thrice.
• Adverb of place – e.g. Come in.
• Adverb of manner – e.g. The student studies hard.
• Adverb of degree – e.g. She is so glad.
• Adverb of affirmation and negation – e.g. He definitely went. I don’t know him.
• Adverb of reason – e.g. She therefore left school.
• Interrogative Adverb – e.g. Where is Neeta?
• Relative Adverb – e.g. That is why I left the party.

Henceforth, Adjective, and Adverb, both are parts of speech in the English Language. But both have major differences between them when we use them in a sentence or when we talk about their types or classifications. Basically, we learned that an adjective modifies a noun and an adverb modifies a verb.