Modifying Another Word

• very: The spice dealers who sold on improperly tested chili powder don't come out of this looking very saintly either.

• quite: True, by comparison with serial killers, football hooligans and the Inland Revenue she probably is quite saintly.

Modifies a noun

• wife: Then, I had phoned my long-suffering and saintly wife, and thrown myself on her mercy.

• figure: Unless you're an unusually saintly figure, you've done things in your life that you knew were wrong.

• man: For more than two hundred years the name of the saintly man has made the place sacred.

• character: Few persons possessed a more saintly character than did this man of God.

• woman: My mother-in-law was a very saintly woman, who prayed a lot and who never tried to interfere in our lives.

Used with adjective complement

• feel: Feeling saintly, I dropped the coins in the cup, pushing my tainted soul just a little bit closer to Paradise.