Adjective groups

It was hungry and poor

We said earlier that adjectives usually appear before the thing they are describing.

Here's a snippet in which they don't:

The whole family would forget that it was hungry and poor.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory(1964)

In this snippet the adjective group comes after the thing it's describing ('...it was hungry and poor').

The verb be makes this happen: 'being' verbs turn our describing adjectives into what we call states. (Note that this applies to 'be' in all of its tense forms, including it was, it is, it will be, and so on)

Also, notice the connector 'and'. Unlike the previous examples, we can't just say, "It was hungry poor." In this context, we have to say, "It was hungry and poor".

On the previous page we saw how we could substitute and instead of using a comma. Could we do the reverse here? Use a comma instead of 'and'?

  • The whole family would forget that it was hungry, poor.

It does work, but the feel of the sentence is quite different—the qualities are more emphatic, like something you'd find in a gritty detective story.

So the answer is yes, but in general, it's better to connect adjectives with 'and' when you're describing a state of being, unless you specifically want to sound terse or abrupt.

The whole family would forget that it was obnoxious and annoying.

The whole family would forget that it was lovely and cheerful.

Write your own variation where you describe how something or someone 'is' by putting adjectives after a noun.
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