20 Advanced Adjectives (C1/C2) to Build Your Vocabulary | Total English Fluency

Hi there, this is Harry and welcome back to  advanced English lessons with Harry where we try  

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expressions, idiomatic expressions,  everything that you could possibly  

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Okay, so let's get on with this particular lesson.  As I said, this is an advanced English lesson. And  

in this lesson, we're looking at advanced  adjectives. So why do we use them? And why  

am I giving you these advanced adjectives? Well,  one, it will enhance and improve your vocabulary,  

which is really, really important, particularly  if you're taking proficiency exams. Or indeed  

if you are at that intermediate level  and you want to get on from B2 to C1,  

you're really going to need to improve  your vocabulary, broaden it as much as  

possible. It gets a little bit boring to use  the same adjectives big, clever, tall, light,  

thin, fat, whatever. We want to look at other  ways in which we can use descriptive language.

Okay, so what I've got for you are 20 adjectives  and I'm going to give you examples of when you  

can use them. So advanced adjectives, I accept  they can be a little bit difficult. But you know,  

it's a great way for you to broaden your horizons  and improve your vocabulary and your expressions.

Number one biased. Okay, and just be  careful also with the pronunciation biased.  

Here's an example. In 2018, a group of  scientists published results suggesting  

face recognition is biassed. Is biased. Okay,  and we often use biased with the preposition  

towards For example, She was biased towards  her brother or in favour of her brother,  

so she refused to believe that he could have  stolen anything from his classmate Okay,  

so she was biased towards or indeed  in favour of her brother, so she  

refused to believe that he could have stolen  anything from his classmate. Okay, so biased.

Next blunt, blunt. Now, sometimes people get  this confused with bland. The two very different  

adjectives. Bland means plain and simple. Okay  bland, something that tastes bland. You're...  

like white bread, very bland. Or a picture with no  colour on it, very bland. Here we're talking about  

blunt and it has a couple of ways in which we can  use it. Blunt. So if you're writing with a pencil  

and there is no point on the end of the pencil,  then it will be blunt. You're not able to write  

clearly or draw professionally with it because  the point is blunt and you have to sharpen the  

point. Or indeed, if you have a blunt knife in  your kitchen, which I have many of, they won't be  

able to cut meat. Okay, so you cannot cut or slice  meat with a blunt knife, you have to sharpen the  

knife. So sharpen the point on the pencil. Sharpen  the knife, so the knife will cut through the meat  

it will no longer be blunt. And the pencil allow  you to draw nicely, neatly, professionally because  

you've got a nice point and it's no longer blunt.  Now, the other meaning of blunt is how we talk to  

people. When we talk to people in a blunt way or  a blunt manner, it means we are very, very rigid,  

and we're very straight to the point and can sound  a little bit rude. Okay, so the manager made a  

blunt remark about the future of the company. He  said, the company will not survive another three  

months. That's very, very blunt, He didn't say  there's a possibility, or we might be successful,  

he was very blunt and said this company will  not survive another three months. So blunt,  

can be exactly that it's straight to the point  without any colour about it. And people can get  

a little bit upset that we are so blunt. Okay.  So when we are blunt, we might say something  

that could hurt other people's feelings. So we  have to sometimes soften the blow a little bit.

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Number three, compelling, okay compelling. When  something is compelling, it keeps your attention  

or keeps your focus. So for example, this book was  well-written, and the story was compelling meaning  

it kept my attention on my focus. The lecture  that the professor gave was very compelling,  

or he provided compelling evidence to  the police. Or the evidence he gave,  

really, really told the police or explained  to the police very easily what had happened.  

So it was very compelling evidence. We can  give compelling reasons why we should get a  

day off. So we go to the boss and tell him I  want to take Thursday off. So the boss says,  

Why? And then you give him a compelling reason.  Well, I have to go to the funeral of my aunt,  

my nearest and dearest aunt. She looked after  me for many years when my mother was sick. And  

that's a compelling reason why your boss will give  you a day off to go to the funeral. Compelling.

Number four conceited. Well, people who are  conceited, often are people that have a better  

opinion of themselves than most people have. And  maybe their opinion of themselves is a bit higher  

than what their their actual abilities are. The  student is very or was very conceited. He thought  

no one would get or should get a better grade  than he did. Okay, so he was very conceited, had  

a conceited opinion, a belief that he was better  than other people when in fact, he really wasn't.  

He was conceited and arrogant. So those  words often go together to describe the  

actions or the characteristic of  a person. Conceited. That again,  

he believed that he didn't need these other  people around him. He was so conceited, he  

believed that he was good enough to solve all of  the problems conceited and a little bit arrogant.

Daunting, well, daunting is a lovely word to  use. Daunting means that something is a little  

bit difficult, not impossible, but a little bit  difficult. So challenges are often very daunting.  

So what's the point of a challenge unless it  is daunting? You have to climb that mountain,  

to run that marathon, to win that race, to do  whatever you want to do as a challenge. To prove  

yourself then it has to be a daunting prospect,  a daunting task. The task that the boss set me,  

took many, many days and it was really daunting at  first, but I did achieve it and he was satisfied.  

Europe is facing a daunting economic challenge  with rising inflation and costs out of control  

and escalating fuel and energy costs. So  a daunting challenge for the ministers and  

prime ministers and presidents of the various  members of the European Union, as they face  

into yet another year of economic uncertainty with  rising inflation, much heavier fuel costs and wage  

demands. So a very daunting challenge that they  have to face up to difficult, but not impossible.

Number six defiant. Well, when somebody is  defiant, they stand up against all of the  

odds they stand up against bullies, they refuse  to give in, they don't want to appear to be weak  

or they don't want to give up without a good  fight. So they are defiant. They wanted him  

to resign because of poor performance, but he  was defiant. And he wanted to struggle on. Now,  

that could be the football manager when the team  is really struggling to get any good results.  

They're not winning any games. And so all of  the press are talking about how long is he got  

left in the job this the spectators and fans are  calling for him to quit, and you get the usual  

song in the ground, you're getting sacked in  the morning. And so he's defined though that  

he will not resign, he will fight on the team  will improve. And it's only a question of time,  

they're just out of luck at the moment.  So very defiant. Or the demonstrators were  

determined to overthrow the government they  were defiant against all the odds. Defiant.

Number seven here...Now be very careful with our  pronunciation here. So the word is excruciating,  

excruciating. So something that's excruciating,  we usually refer to as something painful. The pain  

was excruciating. When I broke my arm or when  I broke my leg or broke my hand. Or somebody  

who has a fall in the ice or the snow when they  break their arm or their wrist. The pain will be  

excruciating for several hours until they get  to the emergency department of the hospital.  

They get it strapped up indeed probably into a  plastic cast. Okay, so excruciating meaning very,  

very painful. Listening to my wife sing is  excruciating. Literally there is she can't sing.  

But listening to my wife sing is excruciating.  It's painful on my ears, painful on my ears.  

I pulled the bathroom door on my toe and  the pain was excruciating. I did that many  

years ago and I pulled the nail of my big  toe. Not a pretty sight. So excruciating,  

something really, really  painful. Ouch. Very painful.

Number eight. Again, be careful of the  pronunciation here. Exhilarating, exhilarating.  

So this is something really, really exciting.  Now, okay, when something is exhilarating,  

it lifts your spirits. Watching a Formula One  race, not for me, but for other people find it  

very exhilarating. The noise, the acceleration  of the cars vroom, vroom, vroom. They find that  

exhilarating, really exciting. We played a new  game at Christmas that we bought, a new board  

game called Carcassonne. It was exhilarating. Have  you tried it? If you haven't, you should. It's a  

really really good game. We really enjoyed it.  Exhilarating, really interesting and exciting.  

I climbed to the highest peak of  those mountains, at last I got  

there. I hadn't been able to succeed. It  was truly exhilarating. Really exciting.

Another word again, be careful with the  pronunciation here number nine. Exuberant,  

exuberant. So we've had three words now in a  row with the using -ex. Excruciating meaning  

painful. Exhilarating, really exciting  and now exuberant. Exuberant. Okay,  

so this could describe about lots of different  things. Young kids when they are running around  

and they are excited and they're waiting for  Christmas they are exuberant. Yeah. They are  

full of energy as so the grandparents can't keep  up with them. So my grandchildren are continuously  

running around and chasing each other. They are  exuberant. Okay, so it's the sunshine makes you  

feel exuberant, you wake up in the morning,  you get outside, you want to go for a jog,  

a long walk, stretch your legs, feel that  warm sunshine on your back. Exuberant. Okay.

And then number ten, fierce. Okay, fierce. Now,  this is an adjective we use to describe lots of  

different things. For example, wild animals can  be described as fierce when they're dangerous,  

you know, the fierce growl of the... of the  howling of the wolf in the the forest. Okay, so  

that could be fierce. Or if you met two or three  wild dogs in the park, they're not.... you know,  

they're domesticated, but they're running around  free, and that could be a little bit frightening.  

And if they start growling at you, they can  sound fierce, okay? Or the wind or the cold can  

be fierce when you go out and it's minus three  or minus five degrees and as a really, really  

cold wind blowing. The wind was fierce, it was  really, really cold. So weather conditions can be  

described as fierce. A fierce storm at sea and the  high waves that threatened to sink the ships and  

cause flooding around the coastal areas. This can  also be described as fierce weather conditions.

Okay, well we've reached the halfway  mark we've got ten down tend to go now  

on to number eleven. And the word is flimsy.  Flimsy means something really really light,  

very easy to tear. Like a flimsy dress or a flimsy  bit of paper so easy to blow away in the wind  

and the dress that's flimsy, easy to tear you  have to be really really careful with it. Okay,  

so the paper bag was very flimsy. It burst and all  my shopping fell onto the floor onto the ground.  

So when you have a flimsy bag and you put too much  in it and some couple of kilos of potatoes and  

something else and it rips, very flimsy bag,  they don't make bags like they used to Okay,  

or the bed clothes were very flimsy and in  nighttime it was really chilly. So you need  

to get out that winter duvet. It's nice and snug.  Snug as a bug in a rug. So we get the bed clothes  

were very flimsy. I froze during the night. Okay,  so flimsy, light, thin, not holding much heat.

Number twelve formidable. Now, be careful  again with the pronunciation here formidable.  

It's not such a difficult word, but you  need to pronounce it clearly formidable.  

An opponent in a boxing match can be described as  formidable if he's very strotough.ng and off. If  

you ever watched the Rocky movies, his opponents  in the boxing ring were always formidable,  

and Rocky always stumbled and started but  eventually he won. Of course he did. He always  

won so yeah... But in the movies that the the  contestant or the opponent was formidable, strong,  

tough, and somebody very difficult to beat. It  was a formidable challenge, but I finally finished  

that marathon crossword puzzle. Usually at the  end of the year in some magazines or newspapers,  

you get a crossword puzzle three, four times  the size of the normal ones. And they're quite  

a formidable challenge, quite difficult to  complete. But if you've got spent plenty  

of time of the holidays, when of course, then  you can really really enjoy it. So formidable.

Number thirteen foul. F-o-u-l. Foul, okay. So as  a verb, sorry, as an adjective, we're using this  

foul. So a foul can be a bad smell. So many of the  time when you go into shopping centres or pubs in  

particular, and you want to use the loo the smell  in the toilets, particularly the gents toilet is  

is a foul smell a bad smell. Or if you come home  from holidays and you forgot to empty the fridge  

when you open it, or there's something in there  that smells bad. It's a foul smell rotten eggs,  

musty butter or stale bread, whatever  it might be that there is a foul smell.  

But we can also refer to foul as the mood  somebody might be in. She was in a foul mood  

all week. It doesn't mean she... she smelled  bad day. Hopefully not. But a foul mood means  

a bad mood so that when somebody says something  to her, she snapped, What do you want? What do  

you want? Or you just don't bother go near at  all because you got to face like thunder. Yeah,  

so somebody's not really so happy with  life at that at that time. So she's in  

a foul mood. What has you in such a foul mood?  The sun is shining is a lovely day. Don't talk  

to me. I'm really in a foul mood. I have  been all week. So to be in a foul mood.

Number fourteen hostile. Okay. So when we're  talking about hostile, it means something that  

is the enemy. So hostile situation, okay, or  we can have hostile language. So let me give  

you the examples. We didn't want our company  to be sold to the opposition. It was a hostile  

takeover. So we weren't in favour of the takeover.  We would prefer to have the company separate and  

independent. But the offer was too good to turn  down for the shareholders. So they accepted it,  

but it was a hostile takeover. So something  hostile is something that is against the other  

people. Yeah, hostile Indians all the great cowboy  and Indian movies that I used to watch when I was  

a young guy. The Indians would be described as  hostile Indians and they were only defending  

their own land. The land that these Americans had  thrown them off. Yeah. So but they were described  

as hostile. Yeah. So a crowd demonstrating on  the streets outside the parliament buildings  

if they're demonstrating against high cost  of living inflation. The reporter might say  

a hostile crowd gathered outside Parliament  buildings, waving placards and shouting abuse  

at all of the government ministers, as the end  entered government buildings a hostile crowd.  

Her language is strong and aggressive.  She was hostile towards me from the  

very beginning. So perhaps somebody you  just didn't get on so well with hostile,

Ingenious. His invention was simple, but  wonderful and clever. It was ingenious.  

He had an ingenious solution to  the problem, something very simple,  

something easy to understand, but nobody else  had thought about it. And yet ingenious some of  

these apps that you see on our mobile phones these  days ingenious. All something that makes life far,  

far easier how to find your lost keys,  how to find your car, in a car park,  

how to find your luggage in the airport.  Ingenious. yeah, so really, really good ideas.

Number sixteen. Harsh. Again, we have a  couple of ways in which we can use this.  

We can talk about somebody's language being a  little bit harsh. Or the words they use to us  

as being a little bit harsh, or indeed, we  can talk about the weather. Also as harsh.  

He lives in Glasgow, nine months of the year, the  weather is really harsh, wet, cold and windy. So  

for those nine months, no matter whether it's,  it's June, or it's September, you have to wear  

a coat and a scarf all of the time. It's the  weather conditions are harsh if you're not used  

to very harsh. But sometimes the language we use  can be harsh when we insult somebody or we talk  

very strongly, strongly to somebody, so perhaps  we're a little bit annoyed or frustrated with  

them. And when we finish talking to them, they get  go off really very, very upset. And your partner  

might say to you, I think you were a little bit  harsh with the children. You didn't need to be  

so strong with them, it would have been enough  just to tell him not to do it again. Okay, so  

a harsh lesson. So we're, you know, when perhaps  our teachers take the mobile phone away from us,  

it's a harsh lesson. We told you, you cannot use  the mobile phones in class. So when you do use it,  

well, it's going to be taken from you, and you  won't get it for a week. So that's a harsh lesson,  

one of life's. Harsh, harsh lesson. Be careful  with the pronunciation harsh or harsh lesson.

Number seventeen jinxed. When something is  jinxed, it means that it's not likely to work  

and it's something that even the whoever touches  it, it's going to break. Ah, that dishwasher. It's  

jinxed. Every time you put some dishes into it  and you switch it on. It works one minute then two  

minutes later, it stops working. It's completely  jinxed. Okay, so there's something wrong with it,  

but we don't know what it is. Or perhaps you are  jinxed. Every time you buy something new a mobile  

phone, you have you end up taking it back to the  shop the next day. So no matter what you buy,  

the something breaks down your laptop. Remember  when you bought your laptop after two weeks, you  

have to get it replaced. Remember when you got the  new mobile phone there was no battery in the box.  

So you had to wait to get the battery delivered.  Remember when we had the television and after two  

days, it just stopped working and nobody knew  why? I said I think I'm jinxed every time I buy  

some electrical equipment. It doesn't work I just  give up, you can buy it in future. So when you're  

jinxed, it means that something always seems  to go wrong with something you buy or something  

you do doesn't really mean that everything  but it just appears that way. To be jinxed.  

The government was jinxed from the beginning.  There going to be another election in three  

months. So nothing work. The negotiations  they had with the unions didn't work. The  

coalition they had arranged the other  parties broke down. So the government  

government was jinxed from the very start, and  there'll be another election in three months.

Okay, now we're on to number eighteen. We  got three to go. Number eighteen. Persuasive,  

persuasive. Okay, so somebody who is persuasive  is somebody who can usually get other people to do  

something that he wants them to do, okay, or she  wants him to do he can be very persuasive when he  

wants to be a few good, well chosen words from  him and people usually do what he wants, okay.  

He could be very persuasive and get people to do  what he wanted them to do. So that's the example.  

His arguments were very persuasive, when he was  finished everybody was in agreement. So you know,  

if you're having a debate or a discussion, let's  say about climate control. And everybody was  

in favour of the reasons why climate control  was... was needed and all the climate change.  

But somebody with opposite and views and opinions  stood up. And his arguments were very persuasive.  

And at the end of it, you adapt, you have  to think that, yeah, perhaps it's not all  

true what they say about the reasons for climate  change. So he could be very persuasive, or his  

arguments could be very persuasive. Or the words  he used could be very persuasive. So he could get  

you to think the way he wanted you to think get  you to do the things that he wanted you to do.

Now, we have tedious This is number nineteen.  Tedious. And tedious means something very small,  

and difficult and complicated, and takes  a long, long time. So for example, doing a  

jigsaw puzzle with 500 or 600 Little pieces to  it extremely tedious. One of my grandchildren  

got for Christmas a year or so ago, a jigsaw  puzzle with over 500 pieces, and he asked me,  

could I help them? Oh my god, it took me forever.  Very, very tedious, very tiring, very difficult,  

not so complicated, but just all these tiny little  pieces that you have put together. So somebody's  

work can be tedious, lots of small, boring little  details to be completed. So if you're updating a  

computer system, if you're inputting data, it's  not difficult. It's not rocket science. But it  

is tedious because you've got to make sure you get  all the numbers, all the names, everything has to  

be put in on the new system, so it can be recorded  and saved and backed up. The guest speaker gave a  

tedious lecture with lots of numbers and data and  very uninteresting facts. So you're sitting in a  

lecture waiting for it to finish. Wow, this  is so tedious. It's like watching paint dry.

And then finally, number twenty. And again,  be careful with the pronunciation this word  

unscrupulous unscrupulous. So when somebody is  unscrupulous it means that they have no morals.  

They don't really care what they do what they  say they just really want to make another sale.  

So often, not always you have to be very careful  to get over generalising. But car dealers second  

hand, car dealers are often described as being  unscrupulous. Yeah. An unscrupulous car dealer  

didn't tell the purchaser that the car had been  in two previous accidents. So he bought the car,  

but he wasn't told when he bought it that it  had been in two previous accidents and they only  

discovered it when he sent it in to be repaired  some weeks later. Okay, so an unscrupulous car  

dealer sold him the car without telling them  about the history of the prior history of the car.  

An extremely unscrupulous sales manager sold  the product without providing any guarantee  

whatsoever. There's supposed to be a minimum 12  month guarantee but no 12 month guarantee was  

provided. So the unscrupulous sales managers sold  the product without offering or providing the 12  

month guarantee that should have been provided.  Okay, so that's the adjective unscrupulous.

So there you have it, we've got 20 advanced  adjectives. And adjectives., as I said,  

are for describing nouns. I haven't used  any of the ordinary adjectives big, small,  

bad, little long, whatever. We've  given you 20 advanced adjectives.  

And it would be really great if you could  try and practice some of them, take them,  

take the examples that I've given, try to make  your own examples to practice them. There are 20,  

so it's going to take a bit of time to get through  them. And don't worry if you forget some of them,  

just try to remember three or four and then  move on from that and drop them into your  

speech from time to time. And if you need any  more help, any other help you know where I am,  

just come back to me. Okay, so this is  Harry, thanking you for listening. Thank  

you for watching, and giving you just a gentle  reminder to join me again for the next lesson.