Describe Your Favorite Part of Speech

This month’s quiz focuses on adjectives, which are covered in CMOS paragraphs 5.68–96. Adjectives are words that describe things, like the word “favorite” in the heading above. To learn more about this descriptive part of speech, take the quiz.

(The articles a, an, and the, which are included as a special category of adjectives in chapter 5, are the subject of an earlier quiz.)

Subscribers to The Chicago Manual of Style Online may click through to the linked sections of the Manual (cited in the answers). (We also offer a 30-day free trial of CMOS Online.)

Note: Style guides and dictionaries sometimes disagree. This quiz is designed to test your knowledge of The Chicago Manual of Style.

[Editor’s note: This quiz relies on and links to the 17th edition of CMOS.]

Chicago Style Workout 54: Adjectives

1. Most adjectives derive from

nouns

verbs

2. The number three in the phrase “three pigs” functions as

a fairy-tale adjective

a limiting adjective

3. In “a New York minute” and “a Cuban cigar,” New York and Cuban are functioning as

proprietary adjectives

proper adjectives

4. An adjective that precedes the noun it modifies (e.g., perfect in “perfect storm”) is called

an attributive adjective

a clichéd adjective

5. An adjective that follows the noun it modifies (e.g., public in “notary public”) is called

a postpositive adjective

a French adjective

6. An adjective that modifies a pronoun usually follows the pronoun.

True

False

7. An adjective that follows a linking verb and modifies the subject of a sentence (e.g., delicious in “this tastes delicious”) is called

a predicate adjective

a posterior adjective

8. An adjective that modifies something without reference to any other thing is called

a positive adjective

a comparative adjective

9. The phrase “a more perfect union” breaks a rule against modifying what type of adjective?

noncomparable

aspirational

10. In the phrase “wrinkled canvas jacket,” wrinkled and canvas are coordinate adjectives.

True

False

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Top photo: Three Piggy Banks on a Beach, by kstudio.

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