Enough

‘Enough’ can qualify an adjective or an adverb or it can go with a noun or even act as a pronoun.

With adjectives and adverbs

• She isn’t tall enough to be a ballet dancer.
• I’m afraid your work just isn’t good enough.

• I couldn’t write quickly enough and I ran out of time.
• I haven’t been to lessons often enough to have really learnt much.

Enough comes after adjectives and adverbs.

With nouns

• There isn’t enough bread to make sandwiches.
• Have you got enough money?
• There aren’t enough nails.

Enough comes before nouns.

Enough of

• There isn’t enough of bread

We don’t use enough of unless there is a determiner (an article, this/that, my/your/his etc).
We use enough of when there is a determiner.

• I’ve had enough of your nonsense! ‘Your’ is a determiner here.
• I haven’t seen enough of the film to really form an opinion.

Enough can also be used without a noun.

• That’s enough! Be quiet!
• Enough is enough.

With adjective and noun

When ‘enough’ is used with an adjective and a noun, two positions are possible but the meaning changes. Look at these two sentences.

• We haven’t got big enough nails. None of the nails are as big as we need.
• We haven’t got enough big nails. We have some big nails but we need more.

When enough comes between the adjective and the noun (big enough nails) it qualifies the adjective – it tells us that the nails aren’t big enough. When enough comes before the adjective it qualifies the noun phrase – it tells us that there aren’t enough nails.