Look at these examples to see how enough is used.
She's not old enough to walk yet.
We are not acting fast enough to stop climate change.
I don't read enough.
Is there enough coffee for everyone?
We've had enough of their lies.
Try this exercise to test your grammar.
- Grammar test 1
Read the explanation to learn more.
Grammar explanation
enough means 'as much as necessary'. It can be used with an adjective, an adverb, a verb or a noun. It can also act as a pronoun.
With adjectives and adverbs
enough comes after adjectives and adverbs.
I'm not tall enough to reach the top shelf.
Your marks are good enough to study engineering at university.
I couldn't write quickly enough and I ran out of time.
I've helped at conferences often enough to know what can go wrong.
With verbs
enough comes after verbs.
I make sure I drink enough during the day.
I don't read enough but I'm going to start downloading books to my phone.
With nouns
enough comes before nouns.
There isn't enough bread to make sandwiches.
Have you got enough money?
As a pronoun
enough can also be used without a noun.
I'll get some more chairs. There aren't enough.
A: Do you want more coffee? B: No, I've had enough, thanks.
We know what the noun is because of the context.
With an adjective and a noun
When enough is used with an adjective and a noun, two positions are possible but the meaning changes.
We haven't got big enough envelopes.
We haven't got enough big envelopes.
When enough is after the adjective (big enough envelopes), it describes the adjective – the envelopes are too small. When enough is before the adjective (enough big envelopes), it describes the noun phrase – we have some big envelopes, but we need more.
enough of
We normally only use enough of when it is followed by a determiner or a pronoun (a/an/the, this/that, my/your/his, you/them, etc.).
There isn't enough of that bread to make sandwiches for everyone.
I've seen enough of his work to be able to recommend him.
There's enough of us to make a difference.
Do this exercise to test your grammar again.
- Grammar test 2
The use of "enough to" in the following excerpt from the Cambridge dictionary is not explained in this grammar section:
"In the final straight Meyers stumbled, and although he didn't fall it was enough to lose him first place."
What would make more sense to me is, for example, "it was enough to make him lose first place", but the structure featured above sounds weird to me.
Hi yalvar,
The structure in that example is: lose + [somebody] + [something]. Here are some more examples: My mistakes in the interview lost me the job. The government's failed policy lost them public support. The captain's red card lost his team the championship. It's the final structure listed under meaning 4 here, from the Longman Dictionary.
That isn't the only possible structure after "lose". Your sentence is also grammatical!
Jonathan
LearnEnglish team
It was useful enough!
many thanks 😊
Tello, this test went very good. It is almost too easy.
This is tho easy for me
Thank you very much for your efforts
why there is no sheets to download
Hi ahmad alsaleh,
I'm afraid we don't have any worksheets for our Grammar section pages right now. We are just a small team and we are working on other parts of the site at the moment. But we do have worksheets for pages in our Skills, Business English and General English sections, so feel free to have a look at those.
Best wishes,
Jonathan
LearnEnglish team
I don't really know how phrase enough of works, could someone help me in the details? Thank a lot.
Hello newguy530,
As it says in the explanation above, we use 'enough' before nouns and 'enough' when the noun has a determiner or pronoun before it. So, for example, we say:
In all three examples, 'bread' is the thing being asked about, but in the second and third cases, the words before 'bread' make it more specific.
Does that make sense?
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team