Eight Adjective Suffixes You Need

Let’s talk about eight adjective suffixes that we use every day. Knowing them will expand your English vocabulary and deepen your overall understanding of how English works.

Suffixes are letters that go at then end of words to change their meaning. Often they change the part of speech. You use them naturally without realizing it. For example, the word cloud is a noun. It’s a thing. We add y to make the word cloudy, an adjective.

There were clouds in the sky. The sky was cloudy.

Here are eight common suffixes that we use to make adjectives out of nouns and verbs.

How to learn suffixes

Learning which suffixes we can use isn’t like learning grammar tenses. There aren’t reliable structures we can memorize and follow. We learn suffixes by knowing about them, and then by seeing, reading, and using them in conversation.

How good are you at making adjectives by adding suffixes to other words? You’re probably already pretty good at it. Through exposure, you likely often know when an adjective sounds right.

Let’s practice and learn.

1.) Turn the words into adjectives.

HINT: One of the words in the puzzle needs to be turned into a noun and receive a suffix.

2.) A note about love

The word love is both a verb and noun. So we can say ‘I love you’ (verb), and ‘love is important’ (noun). Let’s look at how we use suffixes to transform the word.

Henry is being lovey-dovey. = Henry is being sentimental and affectionate.
Henry is lovely. = Henry is wonderful.
Henry is lovable. = Henry has qualities that make it easy to love him.
Henry is in a loveless marriage. = There is no affection and care between Henry and his partner.
Henry is loving. = Henry is an affectionate, thoughtful person.
Henry is loved. = Someone loves Henry.

3.) A few things to know about -ful and -less

Words with the suffixes -ful and -less are often opposites.

Something that causes harm is harmful. Something that doesn’t cause harm is harmless.
Someone who is full of faith is faithful. Someone devoid of faith is faithless.
Hitting your hand with a hammer is painful. In comparison, getting a needle is relatively painless.

However, there are some pairs that don’t mean exactly what you might expect them to.

Read about each pair, and then use the words in your own examples.

A.) To be armless means to not have arms. An armful isn’t an adjective. It refers to the amount of something that someone can carry in their arms.

Snakes are armless.
Jim brought an armful of firewood to the camp.

B.) To be mindful of something means to be aware of something. To be mindless means to be stupid or require little effort. We don’t use these as adjectives of character. That is to say, they don’t refer to a person’s personality. To talk about a person’s character, it is better to use the pair thoughtful and thoughtless.

You only have an hour to complete the exam. Be mindful of the time.
The movie wasn’t very good. It was full of mindless violence.

Mary is such a thoughtful host. She always goes out of her way to make sure her guests are comfortable.
Max means well, but he is just kind of thoughtless and mean.

C.) To be thankful means to have gratitude. We can use it interchangeably with grateful. However, we don’t refer to people as being thankless. For this, you want the word ungrateful. Thankless refers to tasks and jobs that others don’t notice and value.

D.) To be helpful means to be someone who helps others. To be helpless means to not have the ability to do things for yourself or to prevent something bad from occurring.

We appreciate your assistance. You have been very helpful. Thanks!
Frank felt so helpless when his wife was sick. There was nothing he could do to help her.

E.) Someone who has a lot of hope is hopeful. In the opposite form, someone can feel hopeless. Make sure to indicate that it is the person’s feeling, not their personality. When we say that someone is hopeless, we mean that they lack skill, or that others don’t have any hope that they can or will do better.

The kids were hopeful when they saw the gifts.
I’m hopeless at math. I don’t get it at all.
We had to fire Juan. We gave him every opportunity, but he’s just hopeless.

4.) Avoid the common error of confusing -ing with -ed.

Another adjective suffix that’s similar to -ing is -ed. Someone can be both charming and charmed. Go to the Bored or Boring Lesson to learn more about how to use these correctly.

Are you ready for another challenge?

Try the nouns to adjectives value quiz!

Prefer some further reading?

Check out the Cambridge Dictionary article about suffixes.

Want more practice?

Educationquizzes

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