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Adjectives Word Search

A word search dedicated to descriptive adjectives, perfect for building expressive vocabulary. Hidden in the grid are eight words to find: beautiful, tall, sweet, strong, red, happy, sad and hot. Learning adjectives in opposite pairs makes them far easier to remember and use in everyday conversation. Print it for free or download it as a PDF: ideal for creative writing and vocabulary-building activities.

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✏️ Create your own word search

Created for free at creapuzzle.com

Adjectives, one by one

These eight words describe how things look, feel and taste, and how people feel. Below is a short note on each one and its opposite, handy for talking about the words once the grid is solved.

Beautiful — Describes something pleasing to look at; its opposite is "ugly".

Tall — Describes height; its opposite is "short".

Sweet — Describes taste, but also a kind personality; its opposite can be "sour" or "bitter".

Strong — Describes power or intensity; its opposite is "weak".

Red — A colour full of energy, often linked to warmth and excitement.

Happy — Describes a joyful feeling; its opposite is "sad".

Sad — Describes an unhappy feeling, forming a natural pair with "happy".

Hot — Describes temperature; its opposite is "cold".

Comparing things: taller, hotter, happier

Adjectives become really useful when we compare things, and the eight words in this grid show every way English has of doing it. Short adjectives such as tall, strong and sweet simply add -er and -est: taller, tallest; stronger, strongest; sweeter, sweetest. Hot, sad and red double their final consonant first, giving hotter, sadder and redder. Happy changes its y into an i and becomes happier and happiest. And long adjectives such as beautiful do not change at all: we say more beautiful and the most beautiful.

Opposites are another great way to learn adjectives: beautiful and ugly, tall and short, strong and weak, happy and sad, hot and cold, while sweet can be set against sour or bitter. Red has no true opposite, which makes it a good starting point for a talk about other colours. In English the adjective always comes before the noun and never changes, so we say a red apple and two red apples.

Four activities with describing words

Adjectives are best learned by using them, so after the grid try one of these quick activities:

  • Find the opposite. Write the adjectives on cards and prepare cards for the missing opposites: ugly, short, sour, weak and cold. The children match the pairs. Happy and sad are already together, and red is left over, which starts a conversation about colours.
  • Describe it. Hide a picture, an object or a classmate's name on a card and let a child describe it using only adjectives: “It is red, sweet and small.” The others guess.
  • Make a comparison. Ask for three sentences using taller, hotter and happier, and then three with the most beautiful, the strongest and the sweetest. It turns the grid into a short grammar lesson.
  • Mood meter. Draw a scale from sad to happy and let each child place their name on it at the start of the lesson. It is a calm way to talk about feelings, and the words of the grid give everyone something to say.

How this grid is built

The grid is 12×12 squares and holds eight adjectives: two horizontal, three vertical and three diagonal, so it uses every direction found in these puzzles. BEAUTIFUL, with nine letters, is much the longest and runs down the eleventh column from the very first row; RED, SAD and HOT, with three letters each, are the shortest and the easiest to miss. No two words cross. Of the three diagonals, RED and HAPPY slope down to the right and SAD slopes down to the left. The last three rows of the grid contain no words at all.

Adjectives for your own puzzle

To go further, open the generator and build a grid of adjectives for a topic you are studying: weather words such as cold, warm, wet and windy, or feelings such as angry, proud, tired and scared. Because adjectives are short, a 10×10 grid works well, and the Hard level adds the diagonals found in this puzzle.

Also in Italian

The Italian for these adjectives is bello (beautiful), alto (tall), dolce (sweet), forte (strong), rosso (red), felice (happy), triste (sad) and caldo (hot). Unlike English, Italian adjectives change their ending to match the noun, so rosso becomes rossa, rossi or rosse. The Italian version of this puzzle, Crucipuzzle degli Aggettivi, has five diagonal words, two more than this one.

More word searches to try

If you enjoyed describing things, try these word searches next:

If you would like to build a grid of adjectives, or of any other topic, the step-by-step guide is in the article How to create a word search puzzle.