Adverb and Adjective

My daughter was doing her homework when she asked, “What is adjective again?”.

I know what adjectives are but I struggled to explain. “Is it the one with -ly at the end?” she asked again.

I know those are adverbs, things that describe verbs.

“I know about nouns, I know about verbs, but I don’t know what is adjectives,” said my daughter.

I then wondered, if adverbs describe verbs, why isn’t adjectives called adnouns, since they describe nouns? Then I remember that nouns when being used, are called differently, which are subjects and objects.

I eat cake.

‘I’ is the subject, ‘eat’ is the verb and ‘cake’ is the object. Only then it dawned on me the reason adjectives are being called so, because they describes ‘-jects’, i.e. subjects and objects!

I then explained the realisation to my daughter, as if I knew it all along, and saw the delightful connection being made in her mind to.

Who knew that teaching or answering a 10 years-old’s question, would teach you a question that you hadn’t realised you didn’t know was unanswered, all your life. Well that’s life.

Thank you for reading.