In this post we'll look at how both nouns and verbs can be formed into adjectives by use of suffixes. (And though a little off subject, how they can be formed for other uses...). It follows on from the post on participles in Pali . What is an adjective? It's probably worth pointing out, in these posts I've been happily talking about word classes - nouns, verb, adjectives etc - without really defining what I mean. Linguists have categorised words as belonging to certain groups. And we are told that a noun is the name of a person, place, thing or idea; a verb is an action or state; while an adjective is a description word that tells us more about a noun. The question arises 'how do we know?' Some words appear to belong to two or more categories: cold : 'I have a cold' (noun) or 'it is a cold night' (adj) smile : 'the monk smiled' (verb) or 'I like your smile' (noun)
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