3.2 Gradable or non-gradable?

 

Wilde

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Read the following sentences taken from the first chapter of the novel The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde and focus your attention on those adjectives in bold. Are they gradable or non-gradable?

 

  • 'We have not cared to live in the place ourselves' said Lord Canterville, 'since my grand-aunt, the Dowager Duchess of Bolton, was frightened into a fit, from which she never really recovered, by two skeleton hands being placed on her shoulders as she was dressing for dinner ...

  • 'My Lord,' answered the Minister, 'I will take the furniture and the ghost at a valuation. I come from a modern country, where we have everything that money can buy; and with all our spry young fellows painting the Old World red, and carrying off your best actors and prima-donnas, I reckon that if there were such a thing as a ghost in Europe, we'd have it at home in a very short time in one of our public museums, or on the road as a show.'

  • Mrs. Otis, who, as Miss Lucretia R. Tappan, of West 53rd Street, had been a celebrated New York belle, was now a very handsome, middle-aged woman, with fine eyes, and a superb profile. Many American ladies on leaving their native land adopt an appearance of chronic ill-health, under the impression that it is a form of European refinement, but Mrs. Otis had never fallen into this error. She had a magnificent constitution, and a really wonderful amount of animal spirits.

  • Their eldest son, christened Washington by his parents in a moment of patriotism, which he never ceased to regret, was a fair-haired, rather good-looking young man, who had qualified himself for American diplomacy by leading the German at the Newport Casino for three successive seasons, and even in London was well known as an excellent dancer. Gardenias and the peerage were his only weaknesses. Otherwise he was extremely sensible.
 

Adjectives describe qualities (characteristics) of nouns. Some qualities can vary in intensity or "grade", for example:

rather cold, cold, very cold

The adjective cold is gradable.

Other qualities cannot vary in intensity or grade because they are:

extremes (for example: boiling)
absolutes (for example: dead)
classifying (for example: nuclear)

The adjectives boiling, dead and nuclear are non-gradable.

Other non-gradable adjectives include:

unique   terrified/terrifying   freezing    appalled    amazed/amazing    excellent   impossible   awful    terrible  

Non-gradable adjectives cannot be used with the grading adverbs such as very, really, a little, extremely, fairly: fairly boiling

To modify them, use non-grading adverbs such as:

totally   absolutely    quite    truly  utterly    

absolutely impossible; quite impossible ;  truly amazing ;

Note: totally is often used with negative adjectives: That's totally ridiculous.

Reflection

Now answer the following questions:

  

1. In the first sentence above, the adjective frightened has been used. Can we say absolutely frightened? Or very terrified?

 

2. Which adverbs could be used with the adjective frightened ? What about terrified ?

 

3. In the second sentence, the superlative adjective best has been used. Is the use of comparative and superlative forms a characteristic of gradable or non-gradable adjectives?

 

4. Is it correct if, in the third sentence above, the phrase very handsome is replaced with absolutely handsome? 

 

5. Can you name more non-gradable adjectives with the same meaning as superb ?

 

6. In the third and fourth sentences above, the adverbs really, rather and extremely have been used. Do we use them with gradable or with non-gradable adjectives?

 

Do it yourself

Question

Practice

Choose the best word in each case.

1. John's book is truly _________

Answers

a. good

b. brilliant

c. interesting

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Question

2. Jonathan Frantzen's latest novel is very _________

Answers

enjoyable

b. remarkable

c. exhilarating.

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Question

3. Can we turn on the air-conditioning? It's ________ boiling in here.

Answers

a. very

b. rather

c. quite

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Question

4. I'm afraid that you can't talk to him. He's ______ dead.

Answers

a. completely

b. very

c. quite

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Question

5. I think Big Bang Theory is ________ hilarious.

Answers

a. absolutely

b. rather

c. very

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Moving on



  • To practise the difference between gradable and non-gradable adjectives, do these activities. First, play the game to guess the synonym and then do the multiple choice activity.
  •  Need more practice? Try these exercises.