I. Adjectives are derived from Nouns in several different ways:—­

1.  By the adding of ous, ious, eous, y, ey, ic, al, ical or ine:  (sometimes with an omission or change of some of the final letters:) as, danger, dangerous; glory, glorious; right, righteous; rock, rocky; clay, clayey; poet, poetic, or poetical; nation, national; method, methodical; vertex, vertical; clergy, clerical; adamant, adamantine.  Adjectives thus formed, generally apply the properties of their primitives, to the nouns to which they relate.

2.  By the adding of ful:  as, fear, fearful; cheer, cheerful; grace, graceful; shame, shameful; power, powerful.  These come almost entirely from personal qualities or feelings, and denote abundance.

3.  By the adding of some:  as, burden, burdensome; game, gamesome; toil, toilsome.  These denote plenty, but do not exaggerate.

4.  By the adding of en:  as, oak, oaken; silk, silken; wheat, wheaten; oat, oaten; hemp, hempen.  Here the derivative denotes the matter of which something is made.

5.  By the adding of ly or ish:  as, friend, friendly; gentleman, gentlemanly; child, childish; prude, prudish.  These denote resemblance.  The termination ly signifies like.

6.  By the adding of able or ible:  as, fashion, fashionable; access, accessible.  But these terminations are generally, and more properly, added to verbs.  See Obs. 17th, 18th, &c., on the Rules for Spelling.

7.  By the adding of less:  as, house, houseless; death, deathless; sleep, sleepless; bottom, bottomless.  These denote privation or exemption—­the absence of what is named by the primitive.

8.  By the adding of ed:  as, saint, sainted; bigot, bigoted; mast, masted; wit, witted.  These have a resemblance to participles, and some of them are rarely used, except when joined with some other word to form a compound adjective:  as, three-sided, bare-footed, long-eared, hundred-handed, flat-nosed, hard-hearted, marble-hearted, chicken-hearted.

9.  Adjectives coming from proper names, take various terminations:  as, America, American; England, English; Dane, Danish; Portugal, Portuguese; Plato, Platonic.

10.  Nouns are often converted into adjectives, without change of termination:  as, paper currency; a gold chain; silver knee-buckles.

II.  Adjectives are derived from Adjectives in several different ways:—­

1.  By the adding of ish or some:  as, white, whitish; green, greenish; lone, lonesome; glad, gladsome.  These denote quality with some diminution.

2.  By the prefixing of dis, in, or un:  as, honest, dishonest; consistent, inconsistent; wise, unwise.  These express a negation of the quality denoted by their primitives.