Grammar: Word classes: Adjectives

Describing qualities and attributes

Age and time

When we describe people and things we often want to say how old they are. Some common adjectives for describing age are:

newborn	young (or new for things)
teenaged	twenty-something
thirtyish	adult
middle-aged	elderly
old	ancient

Note that when we state someone's age, we use 'years' when it follows a relating verb, but we use 'year' when it is part of a noun group:

My sister is twenty-two years old.
My twenty-two year old sister has just gone to America.

We can also describe something in terms of time:

daily
early
frequent
late
recent