2.1 Describing people - appearance

Most definitely, it is simply impossible to describe anyone without giving some portrait characteristics and appearance. Let’s study proper vocabulary which we shall need to describe people.

Chunky Muscular Obese slim

Hair: straight hair, curly hair, wavy hair, a crew-cut, receding hair, bald

Face: thin-faced, round-faced, with a chubby face, with freckles, a few wrinkles, beard, moustache

Skin: dark skinned; pale-skinned

He used to have black hair but now its gone grey, almost white.

What sort of person would you like to go out with? Blonde, fair, dark or ginger-haired, red-haired?

She has such beautiful auburn hair. [red-brown] Fair and dark can be used for hair, complexion or skin.

Height and build

A rather plump, or a slim woman, an obese person (negative), a stout man [positive]

Fat may sound impolite. Instead we often say a bit overweight. If someone is broad and solid, we can say they are stocky. A person with good muscles can be well-built or muscular.

If someone is terribly thin and refuses to eat, they may be anorexic.

General appearance

She's a very smart and elegant woman, always well-dressed; her husband is quite the opposite, very scruffy and untidy-looking. He’s very good-looking, but his friend's rather unattractive.

Do you think beautiful women are always attracted to handsome men? I don't. I think first impressions matter most.

The suffix -ish is useful for describing people: She's tallish. He has brownish hair. He must be thirtyish.

Exercise № 14. Translate these expressions:

1. тучный мужчина и полная женщина, 2. Немного полноватый слесарь 3. Довольно высокая секретарша 4. Хорошо сложенный жених 5. Коренастый пожарник 6. Страдающий отсутствием аппетита инженер 7. Ей должно быть около сорока лет.

There is a great variety of suffixes, which can help to enlarge active vocabulary.

-er - is used for the person who does an activity, e.g. writer, worker, shopper, teacher. You can use -er with a wide range of verbs to make them into nouns.

Sometimes, the suffix is written as -or instead of -er. It is worth making a special list of these as you meet them, e.g. actor, operator, sailor, supervisor.

-er/-or are also used for things which do a particular job, e.g. pencil-sharpener, bottle- opener, grater, projector.

-er and -ее can contrast with each other meaning ‘person who does something.’ (-er) and ‘person who receives or experiences the action’ (-ее), e.g. employer/employee, sender/addressee, payee (e.g. of a cheque).

-(t)ion - is used to make nouns from verbs: complication pollution reduction alteration donation admission

-ist [person] and -ism [activity or ideology]: used for people’s politics, beliefs and ideologies, and sometimes their profession (compare with -er/-or professions above), e.g. Marxism, Buddhism, journalism, anarchist, physicist, terrorist.

-ist - is also often used for people who play musical instruments, e.g. pianist, violinist, cellist. -ness is used to make nouns from adjectives. Note what happens to adjectives that end in -y: goodness, readiness, forgetfulness, happiness, sadness, weakness.

Translate in English:

Скрипач, пианист, виолончелист, эскапист, аналитик, физиотерапевт, врач, регбист.

Adjective suffix

-able/-ible - with verbs, means ‘can be done’. Drinkable, washable, readable, recognizable, countable. Examples with -ible: edible (can be eaten) flexible (can be bent)

Try to describe these pictures paying attention on general appearance and use one idiomatic expression, which would specify the character best.