adjective
/ˈædʒɪktɪv/noun
Word that describes or qualifies a noun
From Latin ad- (to) + Latin iacere (to throw).
Lineage
ad-
iacere
-īvus
The story
Imagine a Roman grammarian pointing at a noun and saying, in effect, “Here is something thrown onto it.” That picture lies behind Latin adiectivus, “added,” from ad- “toward” plus iaciō “I throw”; the description was later carried into Old French adjectif and Middle English adjectif. Wiktionary notes that the Latin term was also modeled on Greek ἐπιθετικόν, the source of epithet—so an adjective and an epithet are distant grammatical cousins built around the idea of something placed onto a name. By the late fourteenth century, English had its adjective, the linguistic garnish that lets a noun arrive wearing a red hat rather than merely being a hat. In Britain, especially by Kipling’s 1888 Soldiers Three, “the Adjective” could even serve as a euphemism for bloody: grammar briefly became a polite mask for profanity.
Modern usage
A British euphemistic reference to the taboo intensifier “bloody.”
- Popularized by
- Rudyard Kipling
- Heard in
- British euphemism · informal speech
- See
- Kipling, Soldiers Three (1888)
Words from the same roots
-īvus · Latin, ‘forming adjectives meaning “relating to” or “characterized by”’
Derivedactive, passive, relative, positive, comparative, superlative