Emotions and Feelings Vocabulary Quiz
Test your English emotions and feelings vocabulary with our free quiz. 20 questions on adjectives for emotions, from A2 to B2 level.
Keep building your emotions vocabulary.
What This Quiz Covers
This quiz tests a broad range of English vocabulary for emotions and feelings, spanning from everyday basic adjectives to more nuanced upper-intermediate terms. You will encounter words describing positive states such as elated, content and grateful, as well as negative ones like anxious, disappointed and resentful. The questions also cover mixed or context-dependent emotions such as nostalgic, overwhelmed and relieved.
Each question presents a short situation or sentence and asks you to choose the emotion word that best fits. This format mirrors real-world reading comprehension tasks and CEFR-aligned assessment styles used at A2, B1 and lower B2 levels. Knowing how to recognise and use emotion adjectives accurately is essential for writing, speaking and listening tasks across all major English exams.
The 20 questions are drawn from the core Emotions & Feelings vocabulary list and include both high-frequency words tested in everyday conversation and less obvious synonyms that appear in formal writing and IELTS reading passages.
What You Will Learn
- The precise meaning of 20 key emotion adjectives in English and the contexts in which each one is used naturally.
- The difference between commonly confused pairs such as nervous vs anxious, happy vs content, and angry vs furious.
- How to identify the correct emotion word from a short situational description — a skill directly tested in Cambridge, IELTS and TOEFL vocabulary sections.
- Which emotion words are typically used as predicative adjectives (after a verb: "She felt embarrassed") versus attributive adjectives (before a noun: "an embarrassing moment").
How to Prepare
Before taking this quiz, review the related study page: Emotions & Feelings vocabulary and grammar. That page covers 20 core words with definitions, example sentences and usage notes. Pay close attention to the difference between the -ed form (describing how a person feels) and the -ing form (describing what causes the feeling) — for example, "I was bored" versus "The lesson was boring."
It also helps to practise emotions vocabulary in context rather than in isolated lists. Try writing two or three sentences describing how you or a fictional character felt in a specific situation, using as many of the target words as possible. This active recall technique significantly improves retention and prepares you for the situational format used in this quiz.
Emotions Vocabulary — FAQ
In everyday English the two words are often used interchangeably, but they have a subtle distinction. An emotion refers to an intense, often short-lived physiological and psychological reaction — fear, anger, joy. A feeling is the conscious, subjective experience of that state — it is more internal and personal. In grammar both words can introduce the same adjectives: "I feel happy" and "I have a feeling of happiness" are both correct. For the purposes of ESL vocabulary, learning the adjectives themselves (happy, angry, anxious) is more important than distinguishing the two nouns.
This is one of the most common grammar points for intermediate learners. -Ed adjectives describe how a person feels: "She was bored", "He felt excited". -Ing adjectives describe the thing or situation that causes the feeling: "The lesson was boring", "The news was exciting". A useful test: if you can replace the adjective with "making me feel ___", use -ing. If you can replace it with "feeling ___", use -ed. Confusing these two forms is a common mistake in IELTS Writing and Cambridge B1/B2 exams.
Core positive emotion adjectives include: happy (general feeling of pleasure), content (quietly satisfied, not needing more), elated (extremely happy, often after good news), grateful (thankful for something received), relieved (glad that something bad did not happen), proud (satisfied with an achievement), excited (enthusiastically anticipating something), hopeful (believing a good outcome is possible), confident (certain of your own abilities) and nostalgic (a bittersweet feeling when remembering the past).
Key negative emotion adjectives include: anxious (worried about future events), disappointed (sad because expectations were not met), frustrated (upset because you cannot achieve something), embarrassed (uncomfortable because of a social mistake), jealous (unhappy because someone else has what you want), resentful (bitter about unfair treatment), overwhelmed (unable to cope with too much at once), lonely (sad from lack of company), guilty (feeling responsible for wrongdoing) and ashamed (deeply embarrassed by your own behaviour).
Both words describe worry or unease, but they differ in intensity and focus. Nervous typically describes a short-term feeling before a specific event: "I am nervous about my exam tomorrow." It often has a physical dimension — shaking hands, a racing heart. Anxious can describe the same immediate worry but is also used for longer-term, more generalised worry that may not have a clear cause: "She feels anxious all the time." In clinical contexts, anxiety is a medical term for a persistent condition, whereas nervousness is not. For everyday ESL use, nervous about something specific vs anxious about something ongoing is the clearest distinction.
Polite ways to express feelings include softening phrases: "I must admit I feel a little…", "I have to say I'm rather…", "I'm afraid I'm somewhat…". Formal contexts favour phrases like "I'm concerned that…" (anxious) or "I was somewhat taken aback" (surprised). In professional emails, avoid very direct negative words — instead of "I'm angry", write "I'm disappointed with the outcome." In spoken English, tone and adverbs such as quite, a bit and rather soften the intensity: "I'm quite worried" sounds less alarming than "I'm terrified".
IELTS texts frequently use a higher-register set of emotion vocabulary. Common words in Academic Reading include: apprehensive (nervous about the future), despondent (very unhappy, without hope), elated, nostalgic, ambivalent (having mixed feelings), indifferent (not caring), resentful and remorseful (deeply sorry). In Listening, you more often hear everyday vocabulary like annoyed, relieved, surprised and worried. Practising both registers — from A2 to B2 — is the best preparation for all four IELTS sections.
English has many idioms for emotions. For happiness: "on cloud nine" (extremely happy), "over the moon" (delighted). For anger: "at the end of your tether" (extremely frustrated), "see red" (become very angry). For fear: "have butterflies in your stomach" (feel nervous), "scared stiff" (paralysed by fear). For sadness: "down in the dumps" (feeling low), "under the weather" (unwell or depressed). For surprise: "taken aback" (shocked), "lost for words" (too surprised to speak). These idioms frequently appear in Cambridge First and Advanced (FCE/CAE) Use of English sections.
Many emotion words change form across word classes. For example: frustrate (verb) → frustrated / frustrating (adjectives) → frustration (noun). Similarly: excite → excited / exciting → excitement; embarrass → embarrassed / embarrassing → embarrassment; disappoint → disappointed / disappointing → disappointment. Learning a word in all its forms — a technique called word-family study — greatly increases vocabulary range and is rewarded in IELTS Writing Task 2 and Cambridge essay marking.
For speaking exams such as IELTS Speaking, Cambridge B1/B2 or Trinity GESE, practise describing feelings in personal anecdotes. Use a variety of emotion adjectives rather than repeating "happy" or "sad". Examiners reward lexical resource — the range and accuracy of vocabulary. Useful phrases include: "I felt incredibly relieved when…", "It left me feeling rather ambivalent about…", "I was completely overwhelmed by…". Keep a vocabulary notebook with emotion words organised by intensity (e.g. pleased → happy → elated → ecstatic) and practise substituting synonyms in sample speaking answers to build fluency and variety.