Adjectives: order
Order of adjectives
When more than one adjective comes before a noun, the adjectives are normally in a particular order. Adjectives which describe opinions or attitudes (e.g. amazing) usually come first, before more neutral, factual ones (e.g. red):
- She was wearing an amazing red coat.
- Not: …
red amazing coat
If we don’t want to emphasise any one of the adjectives, the most usual sequence of adjectives is:
| order | relating to | examples |
| 1 | opinion | unusual, lovely, beautiful |
| 2 | size | big, small, tall |
| 3 | physical quality | thin, rough, untidy |
| 4 | shape | round, square, rectangular |
| 5 | age | young, old, youthful |
| 6 | colour | blue, red, pink |
| 7 | origin | Dutch, Japanese, Turkish |
| 8 | material | metal, wood, plastic |
| 9 | type | general-purpose, four-sided, U-shaped |
| 10 | purpose | cleaning, hammering, cooking |
- It was made of a 1 strange, 6 green, 8 metallic material.
- It’s a 4 long, 8 narrow, 10 plastic brush.
- Panettone is a 4 round, 7 Italian, 9 bread-like Christmas cake.
Here are some invented examples of longer adjective phrases. A noun phrase which included all these types would be extremely rare.
- She was a 1 beautiful, 2 tall, 3 thin, 5 young, 6 black-haired, 7 Scottish woman.
- What an 1 amazing, 2 little, 5 old, 7 Chinese cup and saucer!
Adjectives joined by and
When more than one adjective occurs after a verb such as be (a linking verb), the second last adjective is normally connected to the last adjective by and:
- Home was always a warm, welcoming place. Now it is sad, dark and cold.
And is less common when more than one adjective comes before the noun (e.g. a warm, welcoming place). However, we can use and when there are two or more adjectives of the same type, or when the adjectives refer to different parts of the same thing:
- It was a blue and green cotton shirt.
- Adjectives