This explains the usage of Indonesian adjectives (adjektif, adjektiva, kata sifat). In many cases, adverbs are confused with the adjectives, here in this page, these are treated separately.
As a rule, adjectives are generally placed after the head noun (then this sequence is known as postposed or head-initial). However, in numerous fixed phrases, including metaphors (often inherited from Malay), adjectives are placed before the head noun (preposed or head-final). Examples from fixed phrases include:
There are also few adjectives that are always placed before the head noun, regardless of being fixed phrases or not:
These apparent exceptions to the placement of adjectives, may have been originated as nominalized adjectives, which can be also formed by adding -nya (keras kepala ≈ kerasnya kepala).
Degree in Indonesian adjectives can be formed by affixation, or by adverbs.
Superlatives are formed by either prefixing ter- (although this do not exist for all adjectives), placing paling ~ sangat ~ amat before the adjective, or (in the colloquial language) placing banget ~ sekali after the adjective.
Equatives are formed by se- + reduplication + -nya, although this is more common in formal language rather than in speech.
Inflected comparatives are relatively rare, but the examples can be formed by -an (e.g. besaran) and mostly found in colloquial speech (the analytic one is more common, by placing lebih before the adjective).
Uninflected comparatives do exist in some fixed phrases, e.g. besar pasak daripada tiang, lit. "the peg is larger than the pole".
Adjectives can be derived into verbs, by adding meng- ~ ng- (colloquial), most often with the sense of "becoming root", e.g. membesar (“to be big”), mengecil (“to be small”)
Currently, the only distinct demonyms in Indonesian are Portugis and Tionghoa, being derived from Portugal (“Portugal”) and Tiongkok (“China”), respectively.