Adjectives: -ed, -ing, Gradable and Extreme

• We use -ed adjectives to describe how someone feels and -ing adjectives to describe the thing or person that causes the feeling. Gradable adjectives can be modified with 'very', while extreme adjectives already mean 'very + adjective' and use 'absolutely'.
• Type
• Meaning / Usage
• Example
• -ed Adjective
• Describes a feeling
• Ethan was exhausted after fixing the Seattle codebase.
• -ing Adjective
• Describes the cause
• That long debugging session in Boston was exhausting.
• Gradable
• Can use 'very' or 'somewhat'
• Sarah is very smart and dependable.
• Extreme
• Cannot use 'very', use 'absolutely'
• The new Dallas software release is absolutely brilliant.
• Remember
• Never use 'very' with extreme adjectives like 'brilliant', 'terrifying', or 'hilarious'.
• Use 'absolutely' or 'completely' with extreme adjectives.
• Match -ed adjectives to people's emotional states in tech environments.
• Match -ing adjectives to situations, tasks, or codebases.
• Examples
• Marcus felt overwhelmed by the legacy system in Chicago.
• The sudden server crash in Miami was absolutely terrifying.
• Jessica is very meticulous with her pull requests.
• Our team lead was quite impressed with the agile migration.
• Common mistakes
• The bug fix was very brilliant.
• The bug fix was absolutely brilliant.
• Kevin felt tiring after the sprint review.
• Kevin felt tired after the sprint review.

Complete the sentences

• Working all night in Denver made Liam feel (exhaust) ____ .
• The new cloud migration project in Phoenix is (fascinate) ____ .
• Chloe was (annoy) ____ when the compiler threw another error.
• That server outage in Atlanta was absolutely (terror) ____ .
• Developers often get (frustrate) ____ with poor documentation.
• The tech conference in San Jose was truly (inspire) ____ .

Sources: photo by Vitaly Gariev on Pexels