The Order of Adjectives in a SeriesIt would take a linguistic philosopher to explain why we say "little brown house" and not "brown little house" or why we say "red Italian sports car" a
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It would take a linguistic philosopher to explain why we say "little brown house" and not "brown little house" or why we say "red Italian sports car" and not "Italian red sports car." The order in which adjectives
in a series sort themselves out is perplexing for people learning English as a second language Most other languages dictate a similar order, but not necessarily the same order It takes a lot of practice with a language before this order becomes instinctive, because the order often seems quite arbitrary (if not downright capricious) There is, however, a pattern You will find many exceptions to the pattern in the table below, but it is definitely important to learn the pattern of adjective order if it is not part of what you naturally bring to the language
The categories in the following table can be described as follows:
THE ROYAL ORDER OF ADJECTIVES
Determiner >Observation >size >shape >age >colour >Origin >Material
>Qualifier >NOUN
Determiners — articles and other limiters
See Determiners Observation — postdeterminers and limiter adjectives (e.g., a real hero, a perfect idiot) and adjectives subject to subjective measure (e.g., beautiful, interesting)
Size and Shape — adjectives subject to objective measure (e.g., wealthy, large, round)
Age — adjectives denoting age (e.g., young, old, new, ancient)
Color — adjectives denoting color (e.g., red, black, pale)
Origin — denominal adjectives denoting source of noun (e.g., French, American, Canadian)
Material — denominal adjectives denoting what something is made of (e.g., woolen, metallic, wooden)
Qualifier — final limiter, often regarded as part of the noun (e.g., rocking chair, hunting cabin, passenger car, book cover)
(Posted by David L UK)
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Word Order for Adjectives Exercise(with answers)
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1 My smelly old maths teacher
my teacher old maths smelly
2 a small old black Turkish box
black small box Turkish a old
3 a friendly fat young man
man a fat friendly young
4 our boring tall headmaster
tall our headmaster boring
5 a long dark wooden table
wooden dark a table long
6 a beautiful old Spanish city
city a Spanish beautiful old
7 our nice French arts teacher
arts nice teacher our French
8 a perfect new system
new a perfect system
9 a fantastic 18th century Scottish castle
18th century a Scottish fantastic castle
10 a horrible greedy businessman
a business horrible greedy
11 a big old brown bear
a big old brown bear
12 a self-righteous middle-class student
student self-righteous a middle-class
13 a nasty spoilt little boy
spoilt boy nasty a little
14 a gorgeous black-haired green-eyed girl
green-eyed gorgeous black-haired a girl