EVALUATION AND COMPARISON WITH ADJECTIVES AND NOUNS

When something is “enough” it means that it is at a satisfactory level or quantity.

The phrase “not enough” is obviously a negative form of that – and it shows that things are not satisfactory!

For example:

- “There is not enough bread for the entire group to eat.”

Too is used to mean more than sufficient or more/less than necessary.

For example:

- It’s too late to stop him.

- Jerry was too young to watch the movie.

- There are too many people on this train, there’s nowhere to sit.

We use as + adjective/adverb + as to make comparisons when the things we are comparing are equal in some way:

For example:

- The world’s biggest bull is as big as a small elephant.

- The weather this summer is as bad as last year. It hasn’t stopped raining for weeks.

- You have to unwrap it as carefully as you can. It’s quite fragile.

We use not as … as to make comparisons between things which aren’t equal:

For example:

- It’s not as heavy as I thought it would be, actually.

- Rory hasn’t grown as tall as Tommy yet.

- She’s not singing as loudly as she can.

When we want to make comparisons referring to quantity, we use as much as with uncountable nouns and as many as with plural nouns:

For example:

- Greg makes as much money as Mick but not as much as Neil.

- They try to give them as much freedom as they can.

- There weren’t as many people there as I expected.

When we want to talk about quantities which are more or less than enough, we use too much, too many, too few and too little before a noun:

For example:

- There’s too much salt in this soup. 

- There were too many dogs on the beach. 

- I don’t like this book because there are too few pictures in it. 

- The trip was cancelled because there was too little interest in it.