Language/French/Grammar/Adjectives-agreeing-with-just-one-noun

Adjective agreement with nouns — Adjectives agreeing with just one noun

Adjectives agree in gender and number with the noun whose meaning they modify. This is usually straightforward when there is just one noun:

• d'une voix hésitante

in a faltering voice

• ce fameux dimanche

that famous Sunday

• L'eau était froide

The water was cold

• Il lançait aux passants

He shot rapid and

• des regards rapides et insistants

insistent glances at the passers-by

NB: A plural noun might be modified by a string of singular adjectives, depending on the meaning: Les économies russe, bulgare et roumaine rencontrent de graves difficultés 'The Russian, Bulgarian and Romanian economies are (each) encountering serious difficulties'.

Don't hesitate to look into these other pages after completing this lesson: Possessive determiners, Omission of the article, Past Tense & Nouns which exist only in plural form.

Other Lessons

• Gender of compound nouns
• Use of l'on
• Function of adverbs
• How to tell the time
• Adjectives which normally follow the noun
• Definite article
• Plurals of nouns ending in eu, au, eau
• Indirectly transitive in French but directly transitive in English
• Quand utiliser "et" ou "est" ?
• Past Participle
• Meaning of tout à l'heure
• Plural
• Plural of words in Al
• Collective nouns
• Verbs with prepositions