+33.+ When man began to invent words to express his ideas of the world
in which he lived, we have found that probably the first need was that
of names for the things about him. So we have nouns. The second need was
of words to tell what these things _do_, and so we have verbs. But
primitive man soon felt the need of other classes of words.
The objects about us are not all alike. For example, we have a word for
man, but when we say _man_ that is not sufficient to describe the many
different kinds of men. There are tall men, short men, white men, black
men, strong men, weak men, busy men, lazy men. There are all sorts of
men in the world, and we need words by which we can describe these
different types and also indicate which man we mean.
+34.+ So we have a class of words which are called adjectives.
_Adjective_ is a word derived from the Latin. It comes from the Latin
word _ad_, meaning _to_, and the Latin word _jecto_, which means _to
throw_; hence an adjective is a word _thrown to_ or _added to_ a noun.
If you will stop to think for a moment, you will see that it is by their
qualities that we know the things about us. Some men are strong, some
are weak, some are tall, some are short. These qualities belong to
different men. And we separate or group them into classes as they
resemble each other or differ from one another in these qualities.
Things are alike which have the same qualities; things are unlike whose
qualities are different. Apples and oranges are alike in the fact that
both are round, both are edible. They are unlike in the fact that one is
red and one is yellow; one may be sour and the other sweet. So we
separate them in our minds because of their different qualities; and we
have a class of words, _adjectives_, which describe these various
qualities.
+35.+ We use adjectives for other purposes also. For example, when we
say _trees_, we are not speaking of any particular trees, but of trees
in general. But we may add certain adjectives which point out particular
trees, as for example: _these_ trees, or _those_ trees, or _eight_ trees
or _nine_ trees. These adjectives limit the trees of which we are
speaking to the particular trees pointed out. They do not express any
particular qualities of the trees like the adjectives _tall_ or
_beautiful_ express, but they limit the use of the word _trees_ in its
application. So we have our definition of the adjective.
+36.+ +An adjective is a word added to a noun to qualify or limit its
meaning.+