Adjectives are words that modify substantives. They can describe a noun or pronoun or help disambiguate one noun from another noun. Take a look at the examples below:
In each of these sentences, the bolded adjectives modify nouns. The teacher is tired. The fox is quick and brown, and the dog is lazy.
This applies in the third and fourth sentences as well. Note that short tells us more about spring break, and the adjective modifies spring break even though it occurs on the opposite side of the linking verb “was.” Similarly, happy modifies “students” even though it occurs on the opposite side of the linking verb “became.” The core function of an adjective is to modify a substantive, whether it’s placed close to it or on the other side of a linking verb like “to be” or “to become.”
In Greek, the primary way that we can tell that an adjective modifies a noun is through a principle called noun-adjective agreement:
noun-adjective agreement: an adjective must match the noun that it modifies in gender, case, and number.
This means that, for example, if a noun is in the masculine nominative plural, any adjective that modifies it must be in the masculine nominative plural as well. If the noun is feminine dative singular, then any adjective that modifies it must be feminine dative singular.
If an adjective must match a noun in gender, case, and number, it stands to reason that the adjective itself can be declined into any gender, case, and number. This concept is familiar to us from the definite article (which itself is basically an adjective!).
Like the definite article, adjectives can decline into any of the combinations of aspects that we’ve discussed so far:
Like nouns, however, adjectives belong to certain groups and subgroups that determine what sets of endings can indicate gender, case, and number. These groups, also called declensions, largely take their endings from nouns.
There are two major adjective declensions, each with two sub-groups:
Each of these declensions and sub-groups has certain features and rules of declension. We will discuss vowel declension adjectives below; we will discuss consonant declension adjectives after Exam 2.
Three-termination vowel declension adjectives have a dictionary entry that ends in the pattern -ος, -α/-η, -ον. In the feminine, -α is used with an adjective stem that ends in ε, ι, or ρ; -η is used elsewhere. Here are some quick examples from the Week 6 Vocabulary.
The three elements of the dictionary entry correspond respectively to masculine nominative singular, feminine nominative singular, and neuter nominative singular. “Three-termination” means that there are three distinct endings of the nominative singular for the adjective. In order to decline this adjective, you simply take the -ος off the masculine nominative singular and apply the appropriate ending for the gender, case, and number of the adjective that you want.
You’ll notice that all of these endings are familiar from 1st and 2nd declension nouns; masculine and neuter endings derive from 2nd declension, and feminine endings derive from 1st declension. For this reason, we can also call a three-termination vowel declension adjective a “2-1-2” adjective, with each number corresponding to the declension endings that you use for the respective gender: masculine uses 2nd declension, feminine uses 1st declension, and neuter uses 2nd declension.
| Masc. | Fem. | Neut. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nom. Sg. | -ος | -α / -η | -ον |
| Gen. Sg. | -ου | -ας / -ης | -ου |
| Dat. Sg. | -ῳ | -ᾳ / -ῃ | -ῳ |
| Acc. Sg. | -ον | -αν / -ην | -ον |
| Nom. Pl. | -οι | -αι | -α |
| Gen. Pl. | -ων | -ων | -ων |
| Dat. Pl. | -οις | -αις | -οις |
| Acc. Pl. | -ους | -ας | -α |
Here’s an example of a fully declined 2-1-2 adjective: ἀγαθός, ἀγαθή, ἀγαθόν - noble, good.
| Masc. | Fem. | Neut. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nom. Sg. | ἀγαθός | ἀγαθή | ἀγαθόν |
| Gen. Sg. | ἀγαθοῦ | ἀγαθῆς | ἀγαθοῦ |
| Dat. Sg. | ἀγαθῷ | ἀγαθῇ | ἀγαθῷ |
| Acc. Sg. | ἀγαθόν | ἀγαθήν | ἀγαθόν |
| Nom. Pl. | ἀγαθοί | ἀγαθαί | ἀγαθά |
| Gen. Pl. | ἀγαθῶν | ἀγαθῶν | ἀγαθῶν |
| Dat. Pl. | ἀγαθοῖς | ἀγαθαῖς | ἀγαθοῖς |
| Acc. Pl. | ἀγαθούς | ἀγαθάς | ἀγαθά |
And when we pair an adjective like this with a noun, recall that it must match in gender, case, and number, but not necessarily ending, especially if the noun and the adjective belong to different declensions. For example:
But:
The -ου ending of the adjective does not match the -ος ending of the noun, but because both the adjective and the noun are masculine genitive singular, the pairing of adjective and noun is sound.
Two-termination vowel declension adjectives are essentially 2-1-2s with the feminine column (the “1”) removed. Here are examples of dictionary entries for two-termination vowel declension adjectives:
You’ll notice that there are only two Greek forms in the entry that end in the pattern -ος, -ον. This differentiates two-terminations from 2-1-2s because of the absence of an entry ending in -α or -η.
In the absence of discrete feminine endings, the first column of the paradigm is used for both masculine and feminine forms of the adjective. Hence, the name “two-termination”, for the fact that there are only two forms of the nominative singular: one for masculine and feminine, and one for neuter.
| Masc./Fem. | Neut. | |
|---|---|---|
| Nom. Sg. | -ος | -ον |
| Gen. Sg. | -ου | -ου |
| Dat. Sg. | -ῳ | -ῳ |
| Acc. Sg. | -ον | -ον |
| Nom. Pl. | -οι | -α |
| Gen. Pl. | -ων | -ων |
| Dat. Pl. | -οις | -οις |
| Acc. Pl. | -ους | -α |
Here’s an example of a fully declined two-termination vowel declension adjective: ἄδικος, ἄδικον - unjust
| Masc./Fem. | Neut. | |
|---|---|---|
| Nom. Sg. | ἄδικος | ἄδικον |
| Gen. Sg. | ἀδίκου | ἀδίκου |
| Dat. Sg. | ἀδίκῳ | ἀδίκῳ |
| Acc. Sg. | ἄδικον | ἄδικον |
| Nom. Pl. | ἄδικοι | ἄδικα |
| Gen. Pl. | ἀδίκων | ἀδίκων |
| Dat. Pl. | ἀδίκοις | ἀδίκοις |
| Acc. Pl. | ἀδίκους | ἄδικα |
Two-termination vowel declension adjectives, like 2-1-2s, must match the nouns that they describe in gender, case, and number, so we must be extra careful not to conflate “same ending” with “matching,” especially if the adjective and the noun do not belong to the same declension groups. For example:
But:
Because ἄδικος is two-termination, the same form (ἄδικον) is used for both masculine accusative singular and feminine accusative singular.
If an adjective is used on its own or with an article (i.e., without an explicit noun for it to modify), we consider it a substantive adjective, which means that we need to use its gender and number to supply a noun for the adjective to modify. Take a look at the following example:
ἀγαθοί is masculine nominative plural. The gender (masculine) and number (plural) are enough to indicate the noun modified by the adjective, so even though a noun is not explicitly named in the sentence, we can supply one from the gender and number of the adjective: “The good people spoke the words.”
Keep in mind: in Greek, a group of people of mixed gender defaults to the masculine, so οἱ ἀγαθοί can either be “the good men” (if all members of the group are masculine) or “the good people” (if the group consists of people of more than one gender).
Here are some suggested translations for gender-number combinations in substantive adjectives: